Growth Mindset

Growth v Fixed Mindset

You may have heard students talking about how they’ve been developing a ‘Growth Mindset’ within school. Students have been learning about the two types of mindsets; a ‘fixed’ mindset and a ‘growth’ mindset.

It has been proven that having a Growth Mindset can improve children’s progress and attainment. As a result, we are teaching our students that by having a Growth Mindset they can grow their brains and intelligence and achieve anything they want!

Where has the idea come from?

Growth Mindset is the idea of Professor Carol Dweck, the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. Dweck has conducted a lifetime’s research into mindsets and established an opposition between a fixed mindset (the belief that intelligence is fixed) and a growth mindset (the belief that intelligence can grow).

How you can encourage a Growth Mindset at home

• Praise the amount of effort your child is putting into things, rather than how clever they are.
• Explain to your children about their brain being like a muscle – the more they use it, the stronger it gets.
• Encourage your children to not ‘give up’ if they are finding something difficult.
• Let them ‘do it for themselves’ – even if you can see they’re making a mistake.
• It’s okay to make mistakes because we can learn from them.
• Challenge your children to try something new.

Remember the power of YET.

“I can’t do it…………..YET!”