The RealG Podcast Episode 1: Understanding Growth Mindset with Paul Verschueren

Dec 6, 2024

Joel, here, Founder and Chief Strategist at TheGrowth.Agency. When I set out to start recording a podcast about growth that could span from personal and education-based growth to growth marketing and business growth (a.k.a our focus as a business), I wanted to start at the beginning.

Paul Verschueren is a professor at Seattle Central Community College and a math curriculum consultant with the Carnegie Foundation (now West Ed). He's also a husband, a father and a lifelong friend of mine.

It was Paul who clued me into the idea that "growth mindset" proliferated in education before business.

Carol Dweck and Growth Mindset

In this episode, Paul and I the concept of growth mindset as defined by Dr. Carol Dweck in her 2006 book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. When put into practice, Paul has seen the direct positive effect Dweck's ideas around seeing effort as a path to mastery have had on his students.

As an educator, Paul rejected the idea that a student couldn't learn based on their behavior or inherent disadvantages. His desire to find an alternative approach to teaching math led Paul to a consulting engagement with the Carnegie Foundation's Statway program, for which he traveled the U.S. to train math faculty on the groundbreaking college math curriculum.

See an op-ed Paul wrote for the Seattle Times regarding Statway and college math in 2015 here.