Eight Tips for Helping Promote A Growth Mindset in Children:
1. Help children understand that the brain works like a muscle, that can only grow through hard work, determination, and lots and lots of practice.
2. Don’t tell students they are smart, gifted, or talented, since this implies that they were born with the knowledge, and does not encourage effort and growth.
3. Let children know when they demonstrate a growth mindset.
4. Praise the process. It’s effort, hard work, and practice that allow children to achieve their true potential.
5. Don’t praise the results. Test scores and rigid ways of measuring learning and knowledge limit the growth that would otherwise be tapped.
6. Embrace failures and missteps. Children sometimes learn the most when they fail. Let them know that mistakes are a big part of the learning process. There is nothing like the feeling of struggling through a very difficult problem, only to finally break through and solve it! The harder the problem, the more satisfying it is to find the solution.
7. Encourage participation and collaborative group learning. Children learn best when they are immersed in a topic and allowed to discuss and advance with their peers.
8. Encourage competency-based learning. Get kids excited about subject matter by explaining why it is important and how it will help them in the future. The goal should never be to get the ‘correct’ answer, but to understand the topic at a fundamental, deep level, and want to learn more.
Honest Reflection:
Let’s acknowledge that (1) we’re all a mixture of fixed and growth mindsets, (2) we will probably always be, and (3) if we want to move closer to a growth mindset in our thoughts and practices, we need to stay in touch with our fixed-mindset thoughts and deeds.
If we “ban” the fixed mindset, we will surely create false growth-mindsets. But if we watch carefully for our fixed-mindset triggers, we can begin the true journey to a growth mindset.
As a parent or teacher what triggers YOUR fixed mindset?
Watch for a fixed-mindset reaction when you face challenges. Do you feel overly anxious, or does a voice in your head warn you away?
Watch for it when you face a setback in your teaching or parenting, or when children aren’t listening or learning. Do you feel incompetent or defeated? Do you look for an excuse?
Watch to see whether criticism or complaints brings out your fixed mindset. Do you become defensive, angry, or crushed instead of interested in learning from the feedback?
Watch what happens when you see another parent or teacher who’s better than you at something you value. Do you feel envious and threatened, or do you feel eager to learn?
Accept those thoughts and feelings and work with and through them. And keep working with and through them.
Remember, you’re on a growth-mindset journey, too.
It is so easy to judge ourselves on our mistakes, rather than judge our potential by our mistakes.
Every mistake should be seen as an act of bravery. A mistake isn’t a failure, it’s a FAIL - First Attempt In Learning.