Connecting the psycho-social to the subject: Changing Mindsets @ UAL

Workshop delivered at UAL Learning and Teaching Conference 2018

Changing Mindsets is a two year HEFCE-funded intervention that aims to address attainment differentials by building growth mindsets in both students and staff. A growth mindset is the belief that ability develops through effort and by embracing challenge. Based on Dweck’s implicit theories of intelligence, and learning from UAL’s Breaking Bias staff development module, the workshops address the barriers to learning created by stereotype threat (Osborne, 2007) and implicit bias (Staats, 2014). A growth mindset has been shown to challenge the self-limiting identities and other issues that stereotypes and biases can create in peer interactions, staff expectations and teaching and assessment approaches.

This participatory workshop will draw upon inclusive learning strategies to explore the Changing Mindsets intervention materials and consider how the design of multiple iterations can encompass subject-related knowledge and approaches. Participants will be invited to identify an area within their own discipline to situate a Changing Mindsets intervention that addresses key learning and teaching strategies and subject specific concerns.