HIGH POINT, N.C., Aug. 25, 2015 – Getting in the right frame of mind is the first step in overcoming an academic challenge. This is the basis of research that Dr. Craig Curty, director of the Academic Services Center, and Reza Moghtaderi, a senior at High Point University, presented at the South Carolina College Learning Center Association Conference at Winthrop University this summer.
In their session, titled, “Raising the Tutor Training Bar,” Curty and Moghtaderi discussed how a student’s mindset can affect their success in an academic subject and how to train tutors in helping students overcome potential roadblocks to learning. They shared training techniques used with tutors at HPU to help students go from having a fixed mindset about learning to a mindset of growth.
“A student might come into a tutoring session saying, ‘I can’t do math,’ without being specific,” says Curty. “We train tutors that in some instances, the primary objective of a tutoring session is to identify and help the student address fixed mindset characteristics before getting into learning the material. The goal is for students to transfer previous attitudes and beliefs about a course or subject into a growth mindset. Once students recognize a potential roadblock to learning is their mindset, growth mindset becomes the starting point for cultivating their academic abilities.”
Curty says this type of higher-level training helps tutors create positive learning opportunities and more productive tutoring sessions. He and Moghtaderi also presented similar research at the 2014 International Conference on Supplemental Instruction. Curty will also present at the College Reading and Learning Association Conference in Portland, Oregon, in November.