1. Growth Mindsets Hatcham Free School
This presentation is about a concept first put forward by Carol Dweck in her landmark book Mindset. It’s a very accessible and interesting read and is easy to get hold of on Amazon.

2. Understanding Mindsets
Dweck argues that by understanding more about the mindset a person approaches life and in particular problems with we are better to placed to understand why individuals facing similar things respond very differently.

3. Changing Mindsets : Increasing motivation and performance
Mindsets are essentially the way someone thinks about there own intelligence or abilities. While we know that genetics plays an important part in what people are capable of, Dweck argues that they are not the only factor in determining success. Dweck would argue that while not everyone can be a professional athlete, most of us could improve at a given sport with the right attitude, motivation and coaching.

4. Two beliefs about intelligence
Dweck talks about two different views of intelligence which people can generally be classified into. Those who see intelligence or ability as static and those that see it as something flexible.

5. Fixed mindset Believes: Intelligence is CARVED IN STONE
Scores in a test
MEASURE POTENTIAL
Intelligent people shouldn’t have to WORK HARD
Failure reflects a LACK of INTELLIGENCE
She defines people with the former view as having a fixed mindset. Broadly speaking she argues that this is not a very helpful way of viewing intelligence or ability.

6. Growth mindset Believes: Intelligence is MALLEABLE
Learning requires HARD WORK and EFFORT
ALL individuals CAN LEARN and improve
The alternative view and the view she says we should try to nurture in adults and children is that of a Growth Mindset.

7. “Intelligence is not a fixed quality, determined at birth by one's genes. Rather, it is a variable that can be developed at every stage of life.”
(Reuven Feuerstein)
There are certainly counter-views to Dweck research but there are also many theorists who agree with her perspective.

8. As Carol Dweck says “successful individuals love learning, value effort and persist in the face of obstacles”.
“Changing mind-sets is not like surgery,” she says. “You can’t simply remove the fixed mind-set and replace it with the growth mind-set.”
It’s important to view the development of a growth mindset as a process and as the above notes suggest it is not something that occurs overnight.

9. From my own perspective as an educator, I have seen the above examples repeatedly over the years in schools. I generally find that those with the growth mind-set traits don’t simply perform better but seem to enjoy the whole experience of learning a lot more. These students are a lot less anxious about exams, accept things not going to plan and even when not achieving the highest results, enjoy the fact they are workingt towards being the best they can be at a given thing

10. What do we need to focus on to maximise impact in the classroom?
Thinking skills
Questioning, dialogue and talk
Feedback – the steps to making progress
Mindsets to learning
Practical strategies in the classroom
Opportunities for building independence
Praising effort
As a school, these are some of the things we are working on developing in our classrooms. These activities don’t just help support promoting a Growth mindset but also backed up by other research on their impact in supporting students with learning. As parents you can support these strategies at home, by discussing learning and encouraging thinking about learning. Quite often the outcome is less important than the process. A student might complete some maths work and only get half the work correct but through the process of making errors and discussing these with an expert (parent or teacher) they develop an insight and understanding of how to solve the problems in the future.
Reflection, discussion, questioning, sharing, risking, fun, teamwork

11. How to praise
I enjoy watching you stretch yourself and trying to learn more challenging things
I liked the way you tried different strategies on that problem
You put so much thought into this story, I really could see all the settings and characters clearly
That picture has so many beautiful colours in it. Tell me about them.
Another key element that you can support us with is, how we praise students.

12. What if the child didn’t do well?...
I like the effort you put in, but lets work together on the bits you didn’t understand
Everyone learns things at a different rate but if you keep trying like this you will get there
Everyone learns in a different way let’s keep trying to find the one that works for you

13. “You’re the best ballerina in the world!”
Growth Mindset praise vs. Fixed Mindset Praise
Swimming
“You do your best swimming when you concentrate and try your best to do what Chris is asking you to do”
Ballet
“You’re the best ballerina in the world!”
Look at the above two forms of praise. Consider which one you are more likely to use with your child. I wouldn’t say either is wrong or right, but you might want to then consider which you would prefer us as teachers to use with your children. Parents tend to say the first one, because it gives information about how their child can improve. I don’t think it is a problem saying your child is the best in the world at something, but I would also say that children can be shocked when they think something like this and then find themselves not the best. They may well be exceptionally talented or have a great love for an activity but be put off it because they have a belief that would automatically be the best and in most instances this is impossible without hard work and effort

14. In of themselves I would not argue that the above praise is harmful but it is useful to reference talent with effort. The research is very clear that virtually no one attains the highest levels of their chose endeavour without effort and facing some level of failure

15. What to praise
Effort, motivation, struggle and persistence despite set backs
Strategies and choices
Choosing difficult and challenging tasks
Learning, improving
The above gives some useful reference points for things that are good to praise if you are trying to develop a growth mindset. Please don’t worry if you don’t always do this. It really is just something to consider. As a n experienced educator I still praise what Dweck might decsribe as unhelpful things.

16. “What the research shows consistently is that if you face children with intellectual challenges and then help them talk through the problems towards a solution, then you almost literally stretch their minds. They become cleverer, not only in the particular topic, but across the curriculum. It can therefore be argued that teachers cannot afford to allow their pupils to miss out on the opportunities for deep thinking.”
Prof. Philip Adey, 2008

17. David Beckham represents a good example of someone who probably had a lot of genetic talent in terms of football, but in a field such as football this does not lead to success. In his case he also had to practice and work incredibly hard from a very early age to develop his talent. He clearly sees the link between his talent and effort.

18. JK Rowling talk is about facing obstacles
JK Rowling talk is about facing obstacles. One of the things we think about people with growth mindsets is they find challenges easier to deal with because they are expecting them. Encouraging children to develop resilience and the ability to fail and learn from a failure is a really important skill and one that I feel is more and more important in the uncertain global economy they are likely to face. Clearly though this is not about having low expectation or being self-defeating its about understanding that if you want to be a published author like JK Rowling then you are probably going to be rejected a fair bit before being published. There is a good You-tube video with Michael Jordan in it describing how despite being considered the Greatest Basketball player of all time, he has lost 1000s of game, missed the game winning point hundreds of times and lost in the final of the Play-offs tens of times. The point the video makes well is failure is implicitly linked with success.

19. GD Journey Worked with a small group of Y6 children
Whole school staff training day
Assembly for children
Introduced at class level
Feedback and marking
Monitored impact
Celebrated success!
The Learning Pit is a concept we have introduced into school and one hopefully children should be talking about. The idea is that to reduce children’s anxiety and get them accustomed to finding things hard or difficult we use the analogy of the Leaning Pit. The idea is that as part of the learning journey we will end up in the pit. This is the point, when we are finding something hard, don’t know what to do or feel a bit stuck or lost. We encourage children to understand this is perfectly normal, we all go through this and it is not a feeling we should find troubling but learn to recognise it and develop strategies to help us get ourselves out of the pit. These strategies could involves, re-reading the question, underlining key information, talking o a friend to get ideas, looking around the room for ideas from displays, thinking about the problem in a different way, looking back in our books for ideas – in fact the list is endless. Ultimately the hope is that children come to realise that the Learning Pit is a normal natural part of life and not something to feel anxious.

20. We’re good learners, when we’re stuck we….
“read the question again” “Try breaking the question down Into smaller parts” “go back through my book” “ask a classmate who has a similar problem” “highlight the bits I find difficult or the key words” “try another question and come back to the question I am stuck on later”
“look at our working walls and displays”
“listen well to others then try again”
“ask ourselves where we are going wrong and why”
“ask ourselves what could help us,
what we need to work it out”
“use talking partners (but do not
abuse!”
“try having a go on my whiteboard
first”
Above are some ideas we regularly use at school to encourage ways out of the Pit. If you are working with your children at home you may want to try some of these also. Please remember if children are finding homework tricky that is not a problem in of itself and the aim is not perfection but their best effort. It’s good to see mistakes children make and while presentation is valued, neat crossing outs or annotations are useful. I would also say that teachers welcome comments or feedback about how students got on with homework, including their thoughts. Teachers may well not respond but they will almost certainly have read the comments. Finally, I want to say that I hope this power-point is useful and thought-provoking it is not a magic wan or panacea and we don’t pretend a Growth Mindset is everything but we do regard it as a useful part of the puzzle.