Helping Students Cultivate an Innovative Mindset

For educators and parents alike, it is essential to help children develop the skills they need to adapt and thrive in the face of challenge and uncertainty. Known as an innovative mindset, this way of thinking has been proven to help students navigate situations that lack simple solutions.

In our free white paper, “How to Encourage an Innovative Mindset,” we explore the inner workings of an innovative mindset, and how this shift in thinking can benefit students of all ages. We invite you to read an excerpt from the document below:

Our students are falling behind

While educators share the common goal of preparing their students to become innovative members of our increasingly complex society, achieving this can be difficult.

Incorporating technology into the classroom, once seen as a way to both simplify a teacher’s life and universally improve learning outcomes, has at times produced the opposite effect. In fact, research from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that an “overexposure to computers and the internet causes educational outcomes to drop.”

Districts that simply purchase new technology and expect increased student performance have been left disappointed. “If you give kids a tool and don’t show them how to effectively use it, then it’s not going to make much of a difference,” Lan Neugent, Interim Executive Director of the State Educational Technology Directors Association, said in response to the OECD findings. “Why would people think that just putting a computer in front of a kid is going to change that?”

Investing a vast amount of capital to improve educational outcomes has been equally unsuccessful. Despite over $1.5 billion in investment from the U.S. Department of Education to fund innovative education nationwide, a 2018 federal report found that only 18% of those programs actually improved  student achievement.

The situation is even more troubling considering that countries around the world continue to outperform the United States while allocating far less money toward education. In fact, the most recent Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings place the United States 36th in mathematics and 13th in reading proficiency scores out of 79 countries and regions worldwide. Since this global proficiency test was first administered in 2000, scores for the United States have flatlined.

It has become increasingly clear that as a nation, we cannot simply spend our way to improved student outcomes. Similarly, while including technology in the classroom can be an effective way to boost engagement, this alone will not guarantee student success. Instead, research suggests that educators and policymakers alike should focus on leading students to develop an innovative mindset — fostering an outlook that is curious and embraces challenging situations.

Read our full white paper today

To learn more about helping students grow, adapt and overcome challenges, we invite you to download our free white paper, “How to Encourage an Innovative Mindset” today!