By Bill DeBaun, Senior Director, Data and Strategic Initiatives
Reading time: Three minutes
Students’ mindsets are often valuable to their postsecondary trajectories and likelihoods of success. Despite this, practices that cultivate and contribute to positive mindsets are sometimes more difficult to find compared to more “concrete” activities
like award letter review or Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) completion. The Navigator Toolkit, “consists of evidence-based resources and activities
that highlight learning mindset supportive practices.” These “plug and play” approaches are a good addition to a wide variety of programs and organizations.
While acknowledging that “there are many learning mindsets that practitioners might target to support students,” the toolkit focuses on three it refers to as Mindset GPS:
Growth Mindset: Belief that intelligence can be developed through hard work, use of effective strategies, and help from others when needed.
Purpose and Relevance: Belief that schoolwork is valuable because it is connected to a larger purpose and/or relevant to one’s life.
Sense of Belonging: Belief that one is academically and socially connected, supported, and respected.
The toolkit currently consists of more than 20 different resources/approaches/practices (see the list below). Handy filters allow for sorting based on which learning mindset the resource addresses, the strength of the evidence behind the practice, the
resource type (e.g., lesson plan, toolkit, blog post, etc.), and, arguably most importantly, implementation time. For example, on implementation time specifically, the filter includes:
“Low Rating – resources that take no more than 15 minutes to understand and less than an hour to implement. These resources typically focus on information sharing.
Medium Rating – resources fall within the 15 to 30-minute range to understand. These resources take one-to-two hours to implement and include lessons, activities, or protocols that can be replicated.
High Rating – resources range in length of time to understand. Resources take two or more hours to implement and are typically lessons, activities, or protocols that require some adaptation before implementation or spark additional content
creation on the user’s part. The time it takes to implement a resource is given more weight for high-rated resources.”
20 Ways Professors Can Make Their Classes More Inclusive
Five Research-Backed Studying Techniques
A Teacher Mispronouncing a Student’s Name Can Have a Lasting Impact
Belonging Playbook
Build Connections
CRE checklist for Developing Bilinguals
Growth Mindset Case Study Inquiry Protocol
Growth Mindset Playbook
Identifying Sparks
Including Voice in Education
Introduction to Growth Mindset
Maslow before Bloom
Oops! Teachers’ Mistakes Can Help Students Learn
Purpose and Relevance Playbook
Selecting Struggle Strategies
Self-efficacy strategies
Social Awareness strategies
Teaching the Art of Civil Dialogue
Teaching to Counteract Stereotype Threat
The Benefits of Cultivating Curiosity in Kids
The Brain is Like a Muscle
The Effort Effect
Trauma informed Care in The Classroom
The Navigator Toolkit is itself a product of The Navigate Project, which is, “a collective of educators, advocates, funders, and researchers dedicated to developing and adapting evidence-demonstrated practices in the postsecondary access and success
space.” The repository of resources was generated with support from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Navigate Project is part of Motivate Lab,
a research lab at the University of Virginia’s School of Education and Human Development.
Better understanding students’ mindsets is key to understanding and (positively impacting and creating) their experiences.
The Navigator Toolkit has a lot of virtues that should appeal to National College Attainment Network (NCAN) members: research- and evidence-backed, tactical, and with low barriers to entry to incorporate into current programming.
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