Growth Mindset
March 24, 2015 (Credit image: Mark Fuller.)
For a while the message to parents was simple. It was all about praise, boosting their child’s self-esteem by dolling out encouragement and telling them how great they were. Eight out of ten in spelling – “that’s brilliant”. A nice piece of artwork – “you’re so clever”.
However, in the complex world of child psychology, things have moved on and now not all praise could be said to be the right praise. A simple “You’re the best” is not, actually, the perfect way to encourage future enthusiasm for learning or to develop an enquiring mind that perseveres to achieve further success. The language we teachers and parents use to help children seek improvement is under scrutiny like never before. In the worst case scenario, by labelling children as bright, it’s said we might actually be causing them to underperform.
At Barnard Castle Preparatory School we’ve taken this on to develop a fresh focus that teaches children more overtly the value of effort and hard work, that brains and talent alone do not necessarily bring success and, critically, how failure can be a positive.
We encourage children to develop a ‘growth mindset’, a method identified by world-renowned psychologist Prof Carol Dweck to foster self-esteem and increase motivation by helping children to see the positive in setbacks and by helping educationalists understand that praise for intelligence does not lead to accomplishment.
We are so confident about the impact of growth mindset that we are even prioritising it over standard assessment testing at the Prep School as a way of preparing children for the future. As an independent school we are exempt from the Early Years Foundation stage curriculum, which we consider too restrictive, and children in Year 2 and Year 6 do not take part in SATs, instead following our own Year 6 Achievement Award. This incorporates a host of useful skills for life from writing biographies to learning first aid, to running a tourism fair and creating games for a probability fair, supporting both independent learning and collaborative working.
Ben Wicling, one of our Year 4 teachers, has helped us develop Growth Mindset throughout the school and now all our teachers understand and encourage it. It is embedded in everything we do because we believe it helps children develop a love of learning and resilience when faced with challenges.
Growth mindset says that by simply telling a child they’re very clever, you are not making the association between how the success was accomplished, the process of getting there. This can lead to the child developing a fixed mindset, where they believe their ability is finite and effort won’t make any difference. They might even underestimate their capability.
With growth mindset, the focus is on the process and what’s possible beyond basic abilities; that the input of hard work and effort leads to learning and achievement.
The difference between the two becomes most apparent when the child suffers a setback. The growth mindset tries again and works harder because of the association between effort and success. They learn from their mistakes.
For the fixed mindset, success typically comes easy. They are not used to ‘failure’ and see it as something to run away from. They might be scared to contribute in class discussion for fear of getting something wrong.
If a child doesn’t understand the how-to-get-there, they are more likely to give up or find an alternative way, like cheating, to protect themselves from being seen to fail.
Brain scans of fixed and growth mindset children appear to back up these concepts. In a fixed mindset child, brain activity is negligible when they are faced with a difficult task, when they sense a high chance of failure and the absence of opportunity to look good.
The brain in the growth mindset child, when faced with a similarly tricky problem, appears to be far more active as they greet it as a challenge, a chance to learn and they are not afraid of getting it wrong.
With our teachers trained in the concept, we are giving parents the chance to learn how to develop their children’s growth mindset. Mr Wicling’s presentations have proved very popular as our parents are keen to support their children in any way they can. The pointers they take away are relatively straightforward to implement, such as praise for hard work and effort, allowing children to make mistakes and sharing their own experiences where hard work has paid off.
In sharing how it works at home, one parent told me that the aspect that had resonated with them the most was not just praising their child for being clever because they’ve succeeded at something, but praising them for how they got there.
She said: “In the past when I’ve said to my son “you’re so clever for getting all your spellings right” he’s just smiled and carried on with what he was doing. But the first time I said “you really tried hard to learn your spellings for that test and did some great extra work on the more difficult words, which really paid off” he turned round and “yes mummy, I did actually, I did try hard with it” and that opened up a whole conversation about the value of what he could achieve with a bit of extra effort.”
As Dr Dweck says: “If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort and keep on learning.”
At a time when the testing programme is proving increasingly controversial, we’ve found that forgoing formal, national tests has removed all boundaries to learning and brought freedom back to the classroom in a way that supports the development of growth mindset.
Our children are still assessed on a regular basis but we have alleviated the pressure on them and on teachers by developing a mindset that doesn’t fear testing and will tackle anything. We deal with it in an everyday context that promotes hard work and perseverance in everything we do, whether it be English, maths, music or PE, and not because there’s an exam in three weeks’ time. Our children have an attitude that asks ‘how do I do this and what can I do to make it better?’.
The fruits of our ethos were picked up by education inspectors recently who said perseverance in learning was a notable characteristic of our school. We believe our emphasis on growth mindset contributes to this by encouraging independence and greater enthusiasm for learning among our children, less fear of failure, more creative thinking and, ultimately, a positive mindset for life.
Laura Turner, Headmistress of Barnard Castle Preparatory School