Mrs Shearer – Vice Principal

Mrs Reading – Head of Teaching & Learning

What is ‘growth mindset’?

In no more than seven words, can you

explain what you think ‘growth mindset’ is?
Growth mindset in seven
words or less

 That intelligence is not set in stone

 The belief that I can improve

 Knowing that my talent can be developed

 The knowledge that I can be better

 Fixed Mindset
NAF – Need to avoid failure
• Give up easily – low task persistence
• Slow to complete task or don’t complete
• Seek situations with little challenge
• Avoid personal responsibility
• Don’t want feedback about results or performance
• Need to achieve is low
 Growth Mindset
Need to Achieve
• They are all driven to achieve success
• They are all very competitive
• They seek challenges, take risks to succeed
• They don’t give up easily – high task persistence
• Welcome feedback
Now go back to your examples of
success and failure – be honest –
which mindset did you have in each
situation. Share it.
 I quit learning to
I got an E in one of
drive after about 10 lessons
my A levels on the because I was rubbish at it. It
first try. I did a took me 8 years to work up
resit and got an A. the courage to try again. I
MISS TRICKEY passed in April 2016.
MISS LEAR

Some of our own examples

I had to learn how to be a I really struggled with running;

good father to my twins – I over the last year and a half I
had no idea what to do and have given up and started
kept getting things wrong, again so many times, but I can
but I persevered for my now run 5k in 30 mins.
children - MR MANLEY MRS PETTINATO
Intelligence/ability …

Source: iStock, Andrew Rich Source: Z Read

Are you born with it … or … can you develop it?

 Growth mindset: what it isn’t

o Anyone can do anything

o That ability doesn’t matter
o Anti-competition
o Making people feel better about failing
o Simply telling pupils to ‘try harder’
o A silver bullet
o A quick fix
 Growth mindset: the benefits for
students
• Seek out better feedback (Mueller and Dweck, 1998)
• Stretch themselves (Mueller and Dweck, 1998)
• Want to persist for longer (Mueller and Dweck, 1998)
• Cope better with transitions (Blackwell et al., 2007)
• Higher levels of grit (Hinton and Hendrick, 2015)
• Better grades (Dweck, 2008 and Paunesku et al., 2015)
• Less likely to drop out of school (Paunesku et al., 2015)
• Reduced stress and aggression (Yeager and Dweck, 2012)
 Neuroplasticity
Neuroplasticity: The brain's ability to reorganize itself by
forming new neural connections throughout life.
Neuroplasticity allows the neurons (nerve cells) in the
brain to compensate for injury and disease and to adjust
their activities in response to new situations or to changes
in their environment.

YOUTUBE - TED Talk Lara Boyd

What is Neuroplasticity?
 Neuroplasticity
 Chemical

 Structural

 Functional

= changes in the brain

How does this apply to learning?

The brain can be trained and grows best
with challenge
 Neuroplasticity – the brain’s ability to form new connections,
perform better with…

The Brain learns how to

Challenge Practice manage change and failure
until you succeed.

..and this is what growth mindset is …

• The exciting thing about the growth mindset approach is
that it is not just about ability. It focuses on what people
believe about ability – and there are lots of ways that we
can help our children to develop a growth mindset.
• Research has shown that Mindsets can be changed
relatively quickly and there are plenty of things that
parents and families can do to help. Here are a few tips
and ideas that can help promote a growth mindset in
children:
 Celebrate mistakes!
Set high expectations for your child:
The fear of making mistakes and associated
Having high expectations works like a shame can stop children from giving something
self-fulfilling prophecy. It shows that you a go. Try to embrace these mistakes and use
believe they can do it, which in turn has them as learning opportunities, rather than
feeling embarrassed about them.
a positive impact on their own beliefs,
behaviour and outcomes. Use inspirational role models:
Think about your child’s favourite athlete,
musician or teacher and talk about their
Encourage children to be resilient and not journey to success. We call this unravelling the
give up, even when they find something talent myth. If someone has done well we have
difficult a tendency to think they were born that way:
The brain adapts to new information and show them this is not the case. Rather than
practice by creating new connections: help focusing on somebody’s ‘natural talents’, focus
your child to believe that challenge is a on their early efforts, strong work ethic, and
positive thing because it means they are the mistakes and learning that led them to
growing their brains! where they are now.
• Be careful about the kind of praise we use - even positive praise can encourage a fixed mindset
• Understanding how they got there is key
• This focus on being good at something might lead to children feeling happy in the short-term, but confused
when the reason they were praised is not evident. If children believe that they succeeded in something
simply because they are gifted, they can end up re-evaluating their abilities if it doesn’t go as well next time.
• Instead the grown-ups around the child can focus praise on the effort they’ve made to get to that point of
triumph, the strategy they used or the outcome itself

Say things like “you’ve worked so

Praising our children by saying things
hard on this, well done!” or “you get
like “you’re a natural!” without
better every time because of all the
discussing how they got to that point
practise you’ve been doing” or “you
can lead to the belief that being
have found a great way to do that, it
good at something is out of their
worked out really well”.
control
• It’s never too late to change our mindsets: anyone
can develop a growth mindset.
• The trick is to be open with children. If you are
going to change the way you praise your child or
the type of behaviours that you encourage, let
them know why you are doing it. Tell them all about
Growth Mindset.
• Has she / she already decided they are good at certain subjects/ skills in
life and not good at others?

• Do you encourage this view or challenge it?

• Who do they look up to? How can you show them the effort that went
into the success/ achievement? (unravelling the myth)

• How can you harness their ambitions to embracing failure and learning
from it?
 Growth Mindset Growth Mindset
Growth Mindset ‘brain’
language on display
merits in the main hall
around the school

A mini version of the hall

Assembly delivered to all Handouts for students’
display is in every
students on Growth planners on words/
classroom and on all
Mindset phrases to use when
tutor boards
learning

A survey has been sent to all students to complete

about their current attitude/ mindset