DBA 701 - 3.4
anoobrosea
MindsetandCollaboration.docxMindset
· Written by
What is mindset? What habits of mind can improve my writing? Review research and scholarship on mindset. Learn to coach yourself, to avoid unnecessary negativity and anxiety when writing. Explore how to adopt the habits of mind employed by successful writers, entrepreneurs, and product managers.
2. Faith in the Writing Process
5. Professionalism & Work Ethic
6. Resilience
7. Self-Regulation & Metacognition
What is Mindset?
Mindset, most broadly, is
· a mental framework, a habitual way of thinking and feeling about something that informs how someone perceives, interprets, researches, develops, and tests information and knowledge claims .
· the study of habits of mind (e.g., curiosity, openness , engagement, creativity, persistence , responsibility , flexibility and Self-Regulation & Metacognition ).
Key Concepts: Intrapersonal Competency, Soft Skills, People Skills, Disposition, Grit, Mental Toughness, Effort, Professionalism
The mind is everything. What you think, you become.
Buddha
Mindsets are ways of perceiving and acting in the world. The mindsets we hold, consciously or subconsciously, shape
· how we feel, think, and act
· our sense of identity and belonging
· what we believe is possible.
A writer or speaker’s mindset plays a powerful role in their success or failure. People with a growth mindset , for instance, are more likely than people with a fixed mindset to respond positively to tough critiques and to challenges, more generally.
We develop mindsets as we encounter other people, experiences, events, issues, and objects. We may mimic the mindsets of others. We may join discourse communities that ascribe to particular mindsets and narratives. From informal research and formal research , empirical observation , and reading , we develop representations of how the world works. Over time, we associate feelings and behaviors with recurring rhetorical situations , and, accordingly we compose adopt, draft, and revise personas , rhetorical stances , and arguments.
As a rhetor — a speaker or a writer — you invariably develop habitual ways of interpreting and responding to new rhetorical situations based on your past experiences. In part, our personalities, our identities, are defined by the mindsets we hold. Our character–our sense of self–is defined by the mindsets we hold true and dear to our hearts. Likewise, sometimes we describe our friends and work colleagues based on the mindsets they espouse. For instance, when a friend launches an entrepreneurial venture, we might say “Wow, Yolanda has such a business mindset.” Or when someone is afraid to travel, go on a roller coaster, or be adventurous, we might say, “Ah, Tony’s afraid of his own shadow.” And then there’s always Eeyore: “He’s just so damned negative!”
Mindset & Success in Postsecondary Writing
Ultimately, the quality of your texts and your apprenticeship as a writer isn’t your teacher’s responsibility, your school’s responsibility or even the responsibility of your employer. Your mindset drives the writing process. No one–a boss or a teacher or a parent–can force you to achieve your potential as a writer. Punishments or extrinsic rewards can only go so far. At a certain point, you (the writer, speaker, knowledge maker . . . ) must assume ownership over their own development.
According to the Council of Writing Program Administrators, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the National Writing Project (2011), curiosity, openness , engagement, creativity, persistence , responsibility , and flexibility are habits of mind that are “essential for success in college writing”:
|
Curiosity |
the desire to know more about the world [see Invention| Research | Growth Mindset ] |
|
Openness |
the willingness to consider new ways of being and thinking in the world [see Intellectual Openness ] |
|
Engagement |
a sense of investment and involvement in learning [see Self-Regulation & Metacognition ] |
|
Creativity |
the ability to use novel approaches for generating, investigating, and representing ideas [see Composing Processes | Invention| Research ] |
|
Persistance |
the ability to sustain interest in and attention to short- and long-term projects [see Resilience ] |
|
Responsibility |
the ability to take ownership of one’s actions and understand the consequences of those actions for oneself and others [see Professionalism & Work Ethic ] |
|
Flexibility |
the ability to adapt to situations, expectations, or demands [see Invention| Research ] |
|
Metacognition |
the ability to reflect on one’s own thinking as well as on the individual and cultural processes used to structure knowledge. [see Invention| Research ] |
Source: Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing (2011)
Your mindset, your attitude and psyche, influences how you communicate. You may choose to affirm and invest in yourself; assume responsibility over your learning and development as a writer. Adopt a growth mindset, intellectual openness, metacognition and self-regulation, professionalism and work ethic, and resilience.
You can best meet your potential as a communicator by
· adopting a Growth Mindset as opposed to a Fixed Mindset;
· being open to new ways of composing , collaborating , and working with critique (see Intellectual Openness);
· thinking metacognitively about ways to improve their research, collaboration, writing, and feedback strategies;
· adopting the Work Ethic associated with Professionalism in the workplace;
· being Resilient when faced with difficult writing projects, teams, and deadlines;
· engaging in Self-Regulation ;
· engaging in Self-Critique .
Mindset, Consciousness & Confirmation Bias
People may be consciously aware of some of the mindsets that guide how they interpret and evaluate the behaviors of other people, events, and issues. For instance, someone may recognize they have a social mindset–that they enjoy meeting new friends and exploring new communities . Or, perhaps someone recognizes they are a bit cheap when it comes to spending mone.
Sometimes being unconscious of one’s mindset(s) is fine or even helpful, especially when the mindset leads to healthy decisions and good outcomes. For instance, consider how someone with a healthy-lifestyle mindset avoids hitting the dessert table at the buffet table. They may not even notice the chocolate mousse pie or decline it based on habit.
Sometimes, however, not being reflective about one’s mindset can lead to faulty communications.
The problem with Mindsets is that they are working hypotheses , yet sometimes we drink the kool aid and consider them to be substantiated knowledge claims . It’s possible for people to embrace a mindset so strongly that that may overlook contrary evidence. Sometimes, as human beings, we engage in confirmation bias — i.e., we ignore disconfirming evidence and selectively perceive evidence that confirms our mindset or argument. To one degree or another, we all share an urge at times to prove our position. This can lead to close-mindedness, the antithesis to rhetorical reasoning and critical literacy.
As an example of this dynamic, consider how people’s mindset — in this case that the assumption that U.S. Democrats were exaggerating the coronavirus for political purposes — led Fox News journalists to underestimate the significance of the coronavirus when it first emerged in 2020:
Research on Mindset
How the mind works, how people change their minds (persuasion), how people of like-minds cluster together, how people strive for consensus in group situations (group think)–these topics have fascinated researchers across disciplines for generations. Cognitive psychologists, learning theorists, communication researchers, management and leadership specialists have all researched the traits that lead to Mindset.
Researchers have proposed a variety of models to account for how people can break through Mindsets to become more open, growth-orientated, and wiser. The work of Carol S. Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford, has been particularly transformative. Dweck’s hypothesis is that people’s orientation to learning (whether they hold a Growth Mindset or a Fixed Mindset ) predicts their learning and success in school and work contexts more than any other factor.
In Education for Life and Work , a white paper published by the National Academies of Sciences, the National Research Council leveraged past scholarship concerning personality traits to theorize that three of the big five personality traits play a foundational role in Intrapersonal Competencies:
1. Intellectual Openness (Openness to Experience)
2. Work Ethic (Conscientiousness)
3. Positive core self-evaluation (Neuroticism)
The National Research Council (2012) and The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2017) are curious about the correlations between intrapersonal competencies (e.g., grit, perseverance, and self-regulation) and learning, retention in school, and professional success.
Not surprisingly, metacognition, intellectual openness, curiosity, emotional resilience and self-regulation have fascinated scientists, social scientists, and humanists for generations.
1. Humanities Research The “Psyche” of the writer (or “Temperament” or “Character”) has been a popular theme in the humanities. One excellent example of this is the Paris Review , a literary magazine that has been interviewing writers and poets. Since the 1950s, thousands of interviews have been conducted of successful writers. Typically the interviews address the artists’ creative processes and habits of mind.
2. Workplace Readiness Research Behaviors such as “Work Ethic” or the ability to reflect on learning (“Metacognition”) or Self-Regulate behavior to achieve goals are called “Soft Skills” in Adult Education and the Workforce Readiness literature. Sometimes these traits are called “Professionalism.” In its annual survey of the most prized workforce readiness competencies, NACE (National Association of Colleges and Employers) found employers rank Professionalism/Work Ethic as the third most important workforce competency (after Critical Thinking and Collaboration).
3. STEM Education Research The National Research Council (NRC) refers to these traits as 21st Century Competencies: “Intrapersonal competencies involve self-management and the ability to regulate one’s behavior and emotions to reach goals” (2012).
4. Developmental Psychology & Learning Theorists Since the 1960s, cognitive psychologists have working to identify traits that define personality. Over the years, they have identified five traits that predict why some people succeed or continue trying in the face obstacles while others give up. Three of the these traits play a foundational role in the Mindset literature:
· Openness to Experience (inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious)
· Conscientiousness (efficient/organized vs. easy-going/careless)
· Neuroticism (sensitive/nervous vs. secure/confident).
5. Learning Theorists Angela Duckworth, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania and recipient of the MacArthur Genius Award, has developed a scale to measure “Grit” and associated this trait as a predictor of success. Grit is most similar to Conscientiousness (efficient/organized vs. easy-going/careless). Duckworth’s research determined that Grit was a better measure of success than IQ.
In the context of empirical research in the field of Writing Studies , intrapersonal competencies have been undertheorized. In the early 1980s George H. Jensen and John K. DiTiberio’s used empirical and formalist methods in conjunction with Jung’s personality construct as a theoretical frame to research composing behaviors. Yet that scholarly conversation withered on the vine as the field of Writing Studies was preoccupied in the 1980s and 90s with post-process, postmodernism, cultural theory, literacy theory, and multimodal composition. One notable exception outside the field of Writing Studies, was Robert Boice, a cognitive psychologist who conducted empirical research on the benefits of daily writing.
However, from the context of personal anecdote, teacher research, case study, or qualitative research, Writing Studies has long been interested in intrapersonal competencies even if that scholarship was not officially subsumed under the umbrella of that term. Historically, different Communities of Practice (Fiction Writers, Teacher-Researchers,, and Expressivists have been curious about the habits, attitudes, and strategies of successful writers. For example, based on his experience as a graduate student, Peter Elbow wrote eloquently about his personal discovery of the power of freewriting. Sondra Pearl explored ways writers work with “felt sense”–an inchoate, prelinguistic feeling about what one was trying to say. Some qualitative researchers have followed small groups of students throughout their college courses , e.g. Carroll, 2002; Beaufort, 2007; Ebest 2005; Wardle, 2009; Fraiberg, 2010; Nowacek, 2011; Driscoll & Wells, 2012; Wardle & Roozen, 2012). And recently there has been a great deal of interest in using interviews, surveys, and observations of writers and their texts to better understand the role of self-regulation and self efficacy on writing and the transfer of learning.
Works Cited
Beaufort, A. (2007). College writing and beyond: A new framework for university writing instruction. Logan, Utah: Utah University Press.
Carrol, L. A. (2002). Rehearsing new roles: How college students develop as writers. SIU Press.
Council of Writing Program Administrators, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the National Writing Project (2011). Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing . http://wpacouncil.org/aws/CWPA/pt/sd/news_article/242845/_PARENT/layout_details/fals
Driscoll, D. L., & Wells, J. (2012). Beyond knowledge and skills: Writing transfer and the role of student dispositions in and beyond the writing classroom.
Ebest, S. B. (2005). Changing the way we teach: Writing and resistance in the training of teaching assistants. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
National Association of Colleges and Employers. (2019). 2019 Job Report. Bethlehem, PA: National Association of Colleges and Employers.
National Research Council of the National Academies. (2012).Education for life and work: Developing transferable knowledge and skills in the 21st century.Washington D.C.: National Academic Press.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2017). Supporting Students’ College Success: The Role of Assessment of Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Competencies. Washington D.C.: National Academic Press.
OneDublin.org (2012). “Stanford University’s Carol Dweck on the Growth Mindset and Education” . Retrieved 3/19/19.
Mindset.com (2019). https://mindsetonline.com/whatisit/about/index.html
National Research Council of the National Academies. (2012). Education for life and work: Developing transferable knowledge and skills in the 21st century. Washington D.C.: National Academic Press.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2017). Supporting Students’ College Success: The Role of Assessment of Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Competencies. Washington D.C.: National Academic Press.
Nowacek, R. S. (2011). Agents of integration: Understanding transfer as a rhetorical act. Carbondale, IL.: Southern Illinois University Press.
Collaboration
· Written by
What is collaboration? How can I be a better collaborator? Review research and scholarship on collaboration. Explore the interpersonal competencies, the workforce competencies, that comprise collaboration.
4. Critique
5. Leadership (Self-Leadership & Team Leadership)
6. Peer Review
7. Teamwork
What is Collaboration?
Collaboration is the act of interacting with others to do something.
Acts of collaboration include:
2. working with collaboration tools in distributed work and school contexts.
3. working with teams (e.g., negotiating goals, roles, and work plans)
4. resolving or managing conflicts
5. giving critical feedback to others in one-on-one situations and peer reviews
6. critiquing others
7. the practice of listening to others in an open way and reading broadly so that you are familiar with other perspectives on information, knowledge , and knowledge claims.
The competencies associated with collaborative acts are called interpersonal competencies. These competencies, as demonstrated by the review of research below, are highly prized by employers.
Collaboration is deeply interwoven into our identifies and communities as humans. We learn by working with and imitating others.
In general, people are social: they are healthier, more productive, and more creative when given opportunities to work collaboratively. Well—at least that’s true for a large part of the population: the extroverts. Introverts, in contrast, may prefer working alone. Some people find it intrusive and counterproductive to work in groups. But even introverts cannot escape moments of collaboration.
Collaboration is a highly prized workforce competency. In the U.S., the National Research Council, The National Science Foundation, and The Partnership for 21st Century Skills have identified collaboration and teamwork as core workforce competencies. NACE (National Association of Colleges and Employers) found employers rank collaboration andteamwork as the second most important workforce competency (after critical thinking) in their surveys of employers regarding the degree of their satisfaction with the work product of college graduates
· 98.7% of employers said collaboration is critical to workforce success
· 70% of these employers believe college-level graduates are well prepared to work in teams.
Source: Job Outlook 2017. (2017). National Association of Colleges and Employers. Bethlehem, PA: U.S. Government Printing Office.
In the U.S., educational systems privilege individual work over collaborative work. Some students may struggle with collaborative work. Workloads can be uneven. Other team members may not have the requisite literacy and collaborative competencies. Students are not always pleased to be tasked with group projects or peer review. Researchers have traced student resistance to collaborative work to “environmental forces (family history, social class, and cultural identity) and students’ previous negative experiences with CL [collaborative Learning] in the classroom” (see Stover and Holland 2018 ).
Collaboration is characterized by the National Research Council as one of two competencies that constitute the interpersonal domain: Collaboration & Leadership (see diagram below). As discussed in 21st Century Literacies: Cognitive, Intrapersonal, and Interpersonal Competencies , “the interpersonal domain involves expressing ideas, and interpreting and responding to messages from others.”
Source: Oliveri, M., Lawless, R., & Molloy, H. (2017). A Literature Review on Collaborative Problem Solving for Workforce Readiness. GRE Board Research Report Series and ETS Research Report Series, 1-27. Doi:10.1002/ets12133
Over the years, a great deal of theoretical work and empirical research has been conducted concerning collaboration in the workplace and academe. Cannon-Bowers et al’s (1995) review of research posits eight core skills related to collaboration:
1. adaptability,
2. shared understanding of the situation,
3. performance monitoring and feedback,
4. leadership,
5. interpersonal relations,
6. coordination,
7. communication, and
8. decision making.
In 2017, Maria Elena Oliveri and her fellow research scientists at Education Testing Service published an exhaustive review of research on collaboration, building on the work of the National Research Council and Cannon-Bowers et al.
[ A Literature Review on Collaborative Problem Solving for Workforce Readiness. ]
Based on their review of literature, Oliveri and her colleagues proposed four core competencies related to collaborative problem solving:
|
Teamwork |
Team Cohesion, Team Empowerment, Team Learning, Self Management/Self Leadership, Adaptability/Open Mindedness |
|
Communication |
Active Listening, Exchanging Information |
|
Leadership |
Organizing Activities & Resources, Performance Monitoring, Reorganizing When Faced with Obstacles, Resolving Conflict, Transformational Leadership |
|
Problem Solving |
Identifying Problems, Brainstorming, Planning, Interpreting & Analyzing, Evaluating & Implementing |
Language Use as a Collaborative Act
Language use is invariably collaborative. Language is a social construct—a consequence of cultures and people working together to understand experience and collaborate to make the world a better place. Language precedes the individual. According to Vygotsky and other social constructivists, thought is theorized to be prelinguistic: as children we learn to pair our thoughts with language. Over time, as we are exposed to language, we develop inner speech, an idiosyncratic form of language that is saturated with personal meaning and associations. Inner speech is what we hear when we think, what we mumbled to ourselves when facing obstacles and difficult problems.
Collaboration also refers to instances of Human & AI (Artificial Intelligence) collaborations. Increasingly, people collaborate with machines to complete tasks. For instance, doctors work with AI (artificial intelligence) to diagnose diseases; architects to design safe buildings; engineers to build machines, and consumers to receive service help. Collaborations between humans and machines are anticipated to soon become more commonplace .
Collaboration & Intersubjectivity?
Effective communication and interpretation relies on collaboration between the author and the audience. When we enter a rhetorical situation, either as rhetors and audiences, we are able to communicate when we share some commonplace knowledge, such as knowledge of a language, dialect, genre, motif, and story (see Writer’s Guide ).
Communication theorists use a variety of terms to refer to this shared interpretive space between the author and the audience:
· an intersubjective space
· a shared mental map
· shared mental schema
The term intersubjective refers to what writers and readers or speakers and listeners share in common. At a minimum, when we communicate, we rely on a common vocabulary, images, stories, histories, senses, jargon, rituals, histories, instincts, desires, personalities, and attitudes. In face-to-face situations, when collaborating with others whom we interact with a lot, a shrug of shoulders, a rolling of eyes, or even a sarcastic comment can convey volumes of information. Conversely, when communicating with non-like-minded people, we must work harder to establish a shared context.
Additionally, this social space is called intersubjective to highlight the subjective nature of interpretative and communicative efforts. As humans, our subject positions, our histories and conceptual lenses shape what we see and how we interpret what we see. For instance, our political ideology may inform whether or not we believe President Trump committed bribery or high crimes and misdemeanors when he held back $400 million in military aid for Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine conducting an ethics investigation of Vice President Joe Biden’s son.
Useful Videos on Collaboration
Collaboration @ Writing Commons
Co-authorship Facilitate productive partnerships on writing projects, define roles, set schedules, self-assess, and be transparent and communicative about obstacles, expectations, and performance.
Conflict Resolution Be a zen master when it comes to reducing and perhaps even eliminating the inevitable conflicts that occur when people engage in collaborative tasks.
Critique Work strategically with critical feedback. Learn from critiques made by instructors, bosses, peers and clients.
Leadership Learn how to plan activities and resources, resolve conflicts, and reorganize when faced with obstacles. Develop self-leadership competencies.
Peer Review Give helpful criticism in work and school settings (as well as life in general).
Teamwork Team Cohesion; Team Empowerment; Team Learning; Self-Management/Self Leadership; Adaptability, Flexibility, and Open Mindedness
Tools for Project Management Use tools such as Google Docs to coauthor texts, track efforts, set goals, and hold coauthors accountable.
Related Concepts
Archive, Canon, Interpersonal Competency; Collaborative Learning
Invitation to Contribute
Do you have projects and activities that help students navigate critique, feedback, and conflict? Do you have exemplary models of project management? Please contribute to our ongoing effort to help writers collaborate in school and workplace contexts.
Works Cited
Cannon-Bowers et al. (1995). Cannon-Bowers, J. A., & Salas, E. (1997). A framework for developing team performance measures in training. In M. T. Brannick, E. Salas, & C. Prince (Eds.), Team performance assessment and measurement: Theory, methods, and applications (pp. 45–62). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the wild. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Job Outlook 2016. (2016). National Association of Colleges and Employers. Bethlehem, PA: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Job Outlook 2017. (2017). National Association of Colleges and Employers. Bethlehem, PA: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Moxley, J. & Eubanks, D. (2016). On keeping score: Instructors’ vs. students’ rubric ratings of 46,689 essays. WPA: Writing Program Administration 53-78.
Oliveri, M., Lawless, R., & Molloy, H. (2017). A Literature Review on Collaborative Problem Solving for Workforce Readiness. GRE Board Research Report Series and ETS Research Report Series, 1-27. Doi:10.1002/ets12133
Vygotsky, Lev (1978). Mind in Society. London: Harvard University Press.
Wilson, James H. and Paul R. Daugherty (July-August 2018). Collaborative Intelligence: Humans and AI Are Joining Forces. Harvard Business Review.
Stover, S., & Holand, C. (2018). Student Resistance to Collaborative Learning. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (12: 2).
report this ad
Articles Related to Collaboration
· Provide Feedback in Group Situations
· Why Meet with a Writing Tutor?
Help
report this ad
Suggest an edit to this page?
Please share your feedback, both favorable and unfavorable.
