What is Growth Mindset and How we can Teach it to Children?

What is mindset? 

Mindset is the way our brain perceives ourselves and the world and how it interprets and responds to situations, problems and mistakes.

According to an expert Professor Carol Dweck, who first introduced the concept of Growth Mindset, we can have two mindsets: a Growth Mindset or a Fixed Mindset which determines how we think about our abilities and intelligence, how we respond to problems, situations and mistakes, how willing we are to try new things, how much effort we put into learning, our attitude towards challenging situations and so on.

What is a Growth Mindset?

A Growth Mindset is a belief that basic abilities and intelligence are not fixed and can be developed and grown over time, through effort and determination. 

What is a Fixed Mindset?

A Fixed Mindset is a belief that intelligence cannot be changed in any meaningful way. The starting point is that people have an innate amount of intelligence which is fixed and there’s little one can do to change this.

How does a Growth Mindset affect learning?

A Growth Mindset is taught at many schools and classrooms through activities to build children’s confidence, develop their resilience and encourage effort.

Children with Growth Mindset believe that their brains can grow and learn new things, as opposed to children with a Fixed Mindset who believe that you are born intelligent and cannot grow beyond a certain level of ability. 

The children encouraged to have a Growth Mindset are more likely to think they can become intelligent through hard work and effort and may think: I will keep trying, mistakes are part of learning and help us get better, with more practice it gets easier, I will try it in a different way, I can learn how to do it, what can I learn from it, I enjoy the process of learning, I will persevere and so on.

A Growth Mindset attitude can lead to success in a classroom and in life in general.

How we give feedback and praise to children can help them develop their Growth Mindset.

Professor Carol Dweck talks about ‘The Power of Yet’ when she speaks about the Growth Mindset. She gives an example of college students who had to pass an exam and those who failed got a grade called ‘Not Yet’ as opposed to failing, meaning that they are on the learning curve. Not Yet gives them a path to the future.

How do children cope with challenges and difficulties?

In another school, she did a challenge by giving 10 year old children problems to solve that were slightly too difficult for them to see their reaction.

The children who had a Growth Mindset reacted in a shockingly positive way because they understood that their abilities can be developed.

The children who had a Fixed Mindset failed tragically. From their Fixed Mindset perspective, their intelligence was up for judgement and they failed. Instead of exercising the Power of Yet they were gripped by the tyranny of now. They run from difficulty instead of embracing the challenge.

How to teach Growth Mindset to children – how to build that bridge to yet?

-       Praise wisely – don’t praise intelligence or talent but praise the processes the kids engage in, their effort, their strategy, their focus, their perseverance, and their improvement – this process of praise creates kids who are resilient.

-       Reward Yet – reward the process which creates more effort, more energy, more engagement for longer periods of time, and more perseverance when children find something hard.

-       Use the words ‘Not Yet” which gives kids greater confidence, the path into the future and greater persistence.

-       Encourage children to change their mindsets from Fixed to Growth Mindset – push them out of their comfort zone to learn something new and difficult which helps build neurons in their brains and form new stronger connections, and over time they can get smarter.

-       Transform the meaning of effort and difficulty from not being intelligent to neurons making new stronger connections and getting smarter.

-       Value mistakes and challenges and remind children that every time they learn something new, including why they got something wrong, their brains grow!

Once the children understand that their abilities are capable they can live their lives filled with ‘Yet’!