Developing a Growth Mindset With Your Learners

Learn about how you can encourage learners to have a positive approach to challenging situations while developing your own positive growth mindset too.

Stanford professor Carol Dweck and her colleagues first began researching the ability to bounce back from failure over 30 years ago but recently there has been a boom in education with everyone talking about resilience, growth mindsets and fixed mindsets. Many schools have dedicated a large amount of their Health and Wellbeing time to encouraging this positive approach to education among their learners but what does it actually mean? To support learners on this journey, it’s vitally important that education professionals fully understand what a growth mindset is.

What Exactly Is a ‘Growth Mindset’?

The phrase ‘growth mindset’ probably means slightly different things depending on who you ask but Dweck herself defines it as the belief that intelligence can be increased through hard work and the willingness to try new strategies (Dweck, 2015). On the flip side, those with a ‘fixed mindset’ believe that intelligence is set in stone and that no effort or strategies would change that. In the past, we might have spoken about ‘gifted’ or ‘naturally talented’ learners, however, research shows that this is not the case and in fact, everyone is capable of growing their brain through the growth mindset approach. Of course, there are a range of barriers to learning that may make things more challenging for some of our learners but it is our responsibility as educators to find ways around these to ensure our learners have the best possible opportunities to succeed.

How Can I Support My Learners in Developing a Growth Mindset?

Developing a growth mindset is not something that happens overnight but it’s the result of regular encouragement and targeted teaching of strategies to support learners when facing challenges. Many of our learners will have heard phrases like “Oh, I was never good at Maths!” or “I couldn’t do Science, it was too hard for me” from adults throughout their lives. As educators, we must challenge this prior learning through modelling positive attitudes towards all curricular areas as well as teaching our learners strategies they can turn to in the face of difficulties. 

The key teaching points of growth mindset are the following:

• Intelligence and ability are not fixed – they can be developed through effort and persistence.
• Mistakes are a vital part of learning.
• We should embrace challenges as opportunities to improve.
• Feedback is a source of information, not a source of criticism.

It may be a useful exercise to think of things that your class has learned to do and work from there. Your learners will be able to think of many examples such as writing, riding a bike, swimming and so on. Using these examples to show that effort is the path to mastery will help contextualise the learning for your class. You might also want to talk to your class about ‘the power of yet.’ Your learners will be able to think of many things they want to be able to do eventually, such as cooking or perhaps playing a specific sport. Encourage them to begin to add the word ‘yet’ to the end of statements. “I can’t cook” becomes “I can’t cook yet” –  a small change but one that reminds learners of how they can develop skills through learning and effort.

While specific teaching around growth mindset will start your learners along the track to developing this attitude, it’s the long-term modelling of strategies and responses to challenges that will really impact them. Praising effort in learning rather than the outcome or the learner is one way to model growth mindset responses but we must be careful to avoid the pitfall of praising effort that is not productive. As always, our feedback should be specific, process-focused and kind. 

Consider phrases such as the following:

• “I can see you have put a lot of effort into your use of X. Next time you could make it even better by…”
• “I love your use of A –  have you thought about trying B?”
• “What strategies would you use if you did this task again?”
• “I can see a big improvement in your work. Your extra practice has really helped!”
• “It seems like you’ve found this tricky. What could we do next time to tackle it differently?”

It’s important to embed phrases like this in your daily teaching practice and to show your learners how to provide feedback this way too. By focusing on the processes rather than the result, we give helpful feedback to learners, which guides them to look for continuous improvement rather than feeling disappointed.

Considering support strategies and highlighting them to learners will also encourage a positive attitude. Class experts, shoulder partners, teaching tables, calm corners, traffic light cups or visual aids like word mats are all simple strategies that learners can turn to when they’re finding things challenging. Whatever strategies you choose to implement in your classroom, you must ensure that learners know how to access them before they allow frustration or fixed-mindset thinking to set in. 

It’s important to note that almost all learners will have thoughts that align with a fixed mindset at times and even as adults we might find ourselves slipping back into this way of thinking. Recognising that learners might find some curricular areas trigger these thoughts will allow you to better support them.

Growth Mindset Resources

Here at Twinkl Scotland, we have a wealth of resources that can help you introduce the concept of mindsets to learners at all stages. This Early Level Growth Mindset PowerPoint along with our Introducing Growth Mindset Early Level CfE IDL Topic Web can be used with children in Nursery and Primary 1 to introduce the idea that everyone can grow their intelligence. The topic web provides relevant links to various curricular areas along with ‘I Can…’ statements to help you plan interesting learning opportunities. The earlier we can begin reinforcing these positive messages, the quicker our learners will be able to adopt them and increase their resilience. Similarly, we have resource packs for both First and Second Level learners, as well as topic webs suitable for both stages to help you plan a unit of work around the concept.

There are also a range of activities available on our website such as this Growth Mindset Create Your Own Dictionary Writing Activity.

There is also this beautiful Together We Learn, Together We Grow Collaborative Colouring Activity Pack that would be perfect to complete with buddy classes to create a colourful piece of art. Why not create a wall display to showcase the efforts of your learners using this Growth Mindset Teacher Information and Displays Resource Pack?

As well as our learner-focused resources, we have created adult resources to help introduce growth mindset to parents and carers.

This What Is a Growth Mindset? Information for Parents and Carers Leaflet can be sent home in school bags or with termly newsletters to help parents understand the work you’re doing in school.

You might consider having an information evening –  why not use this What Is Growth Mindset? Information for Parents and Carers PowerPoint to support such an event?

Having parents and carers on board with these messages will help embed growth mindset as the norm in your school community.