What is a Growth Mindset?
- In a Growth Mindset, opposed to a Fixed Mindset, ‘people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.” (Dweck, 2015)
Why is a Growth Mindset important?
- With a Fixed Mindset, children believe that they either have it or they do not. It is black and white. It is difficult to cultivate new interests with that conceptualization. For instance, for a child who thinks they are ‘bad at math’, they tend to accept that as a fact of life and a part of their self-image. It is difficult to penetrate that wall to make any breakthroughs. They believe they are bad at math and that is just who they are.
- With a Growth Mindset, children are trained to understand that they have potential to learn new things and improve their skills.
- To start to shift your thinking, add the word ‘yet’.
- Move from ‘I don’t know how to speak Italian’ to ‘I don’t know how to speak Italian yet’
- Move from ‘I’m not good at math’ to I’m not good at math yet’.
- Move from ‘I can’t do this’ to ‘I don’t know how to do this yet’.
- You do not need to know everything at the starting line.
- Understanding that you have the ability to grow and learn allows you more freedom to explore and to fail along the way. This freedom allows you to take risks knowing that the outcome will not affect your self-image.
How to develop a Growth Mindset in Children- Change your Compliments
A compliment of any kind will be positive but being cognizant of your compliments will help to shape a growth-mindset.
- Make compliments specific and growth-oriented
- Try to switch from vague, generalized compliments such as ‘you’re so sweet’ to more specific examples ‘I love that you use good manners’ and ‘it is so sweet that you helped your brother’. Identifying what specific behavior was ‘sweet’ positively reinforces the behavior and helps to shape the behavior so that it will be repeated.
- When you say ‘you’re so smart’ or ‘you’re so good at soccer’, it implies a character trait. This adds undo pressure for the child to maintain that component of their self-image. Instead, try to make the compliment growth-oriented, ‘You are so hard-working’ or ‘It’s great that you love to learn’.
- Provide honest feedback
- Children, like adults, can sense and appreciate honest feedback.
- Children strive with specified parameters and structure. They thrive when given useful boundaries.
- For example, the child says, I don’t know how to do a cartwheel. A lot of parents would say, ‘sure you do, it looks good’.
- To encourage a growth-mindset, one would say, ‘you’re right, you haven’t mastered a cartwheel yet but it is improving’.
- While a child may be insulted at times when provided honest feedback, constructive criticism is useful for growth.
- The child will continue to seek the approval of that provider and succeeding will carry more weight.
- Think of Success and Failure as a Continuum
- Most people think of success and failure as end results.
- When we shift our thinking to a continuum, there is more room for risk-taking and growth.
- It is important to give the child permission to experience failure along the way.
- Working through the failures is often times more educational than the successes.
- For instance, for child who is used to being a high-achieving academic student, earning a failing grade on a test for not fully reading the directions or earning a low participation grade for a class is upsetting but also useful information. From that they learn to read the directions and to participate in class.
- For another example, for a child who worked hard to learn Statistics and stayed after for extra help to receive a low grade and fail the class, it is disappointing but it also helps them to understand that more growth is needed to build their skills in that area and they are not yet proficient.
Growth is Individual
- Rather than competing with others, establishing a growth mindset allows the child to push his or her limits.
- When you take away the ‘you versus them’ mentality and focus more on personal bests, the growth can develop.
‘Getting’ versus ‘Earning’
- Establish in children the idea of earning.
- Often we ask children, ‘what did you get on your report card?’ They are not given a grade, children earn grades based on their hard work and skill-building.
- When we explain that actions lead to consequences we provide the framework for understanding that effort leads to grades.
- When we explain that homework is practice just like one would practice for a sport or an instrument, they gain an understanding of skill building.
- Education is often a vague construct that tends to go unexplained. If we explain that school allows children to learn about varied topics and that skills are built each year in order to help children gain the skills needed to be a successful asset to society (in their developmental language of course), there is a greater appreciation for school in general.
- If we also explain that public education is not ‘free’ but that the citizens of our society understand the importance for children to learn and grow to the extent that our money is pooled through taxes to educate the younger members of society, they may understand the value.