Growth mindset, and its corollary fixed mindset, are terms originally coined by Professor Carol Dweck from Stanford University. Growth mindset refers to the belief that skills and abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work. Fixed mindset, on the other hand, refers to the belief that skills and abilities are innate and unchangeable. So, someone with a fixed mindset may believe that they are “just no good at Maths”, while someone with a growth mindset will believe that they are “just not good at Maths yet”.
For individuals with a growth mindset, their intelligence and talents are not fixed but can be improved through effort and practice. They are not deterred by mistakes or failures but instead see them as opportunities to learn and improve performance. Conversely, for people with a fixed mindset, who believe their intelligence to be fixed from birth, mistakes and failures are signs that they are not in fact as intelligent as they thought they were and can be hugely threatening to their sense of self.
Parents play a key role in encouraging growth mindset in their children. First of all, it is important for parents to be self-aware and identify their own levels of fixed or growth mindset. When I first engaged with these concepts, I was horrified to realise that I was much more fixed in my mindset than I had understood. On reflection, I could trace this back to my own experiences at school and within my family, whose attitudes to intelligence were fairly fixed. There is a danger, as a parent with a fixed mindset, that if you are not conscious of your own default position, you will reinforce this kind of thinking in your children. At Cluey, we often hear from parents that they are not surprised that their child isn’t “good at English” because nor were they, but this attitude makes it very difficult for a child to think differently about themselves, their abilities and their interests.
At the heart of encouraging growth mindset in your children is focusing on possibility. If you see things in terms of possibility, every mistake made becomes an opportunity to learn and every setback teaches you something. That is not to say that you should minimise the significance of how mistakes and setbacks may feel. Don’t pretend that your child is not disappointed. Let them feel the pain; getting in touch with and being able to name and talk about bad emotions is a very important part of developing empathy and emotional intelligence. But then you need to focus your child on how they might, in the future, do things differently.
If you approach all mistakes, failures and disappointments in this way, your children will start to see the point of mistakes. As I used to say to my students, getting things accidentally right teaches you much less than getting things intentionally wrong. Although I will add that I rarely encountered students who deliberately made mistakes – the desire to please and the competitive spirit are too ingrained!
It is also important to celebrate wins and achievements, not as points of completion or finality, but as steps on a learning pathway. Putting less emphasis on these singular events of achievement also helps to avoid the anti-climax and emptiness which are features of fixed mindset. Because, of course, if you believe your intelligence and abilities are fixed from birth, success and achievements start to feel both a bit inevitable and pointless. After all, where do they lead?
Most powerfully of all, growth mindset shows children that learning is the key to their own success, and therefore they are not only more positive about learning, they are more likely to seek out opportunities to learn at every turn in their lives. Growth mindset gives young people the ability to adapt and make the most of changes in their lives and the world around them.
