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Brainwaves are leading providers of high quality school reward stickers, certificates, badges, stampers, pencils & personalised rewards for children.

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Classroom Warm-Up Routine Math Class Warm-Up

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You have heard about growth mindset and know many teachers who are keen to develop it.

But how do you develop a growth mindset in schools?

Growth mindset refers to a learning theory developed by Dr Carol Dweck. It revolves around the belief that you can improve intelligence, ability and performance. The opposite, a fixed mindset, refers to the belief that a person's talents are set in stone . Years of research have shown that mindset is malleable. This means that by helping students to develop a growth mindset, we can help them to learning more effective and efficient.

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How to Develop a Growth Mindset In Schools

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You have heard about growth mindset and know many teachers who are keen to develop it. Growth mindset refers to a learning theory developed by Dr Carol Dweck. It revolves around the belief that you can improve intelligence, ability and performance. The opposite, a fixed mindset, refers to the belief that a person's talents are set in stone .

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For all of us as educators, a growth mindset must be a prerequisite belief and an easy one to champion. However, where Dweck's idea presents us with a narrow gap in comprehension, the divide between comprehension and practice can be quite wide. As school leaders, how can we bring awareness to this gap and implement practices to cultivate a growth mindset within our schools?

To impact school culture and enable any mindset to grow, we have to reach all facets of the community and its members. Thus, thinking about how to foster mindsets at the student, teacher, and parent level is important. We also need to identify the components of the mindset we want to create. For example, Tom Vander Ark outlines both the teacher and student components of an innovation mindset in Innovation = Growth + Maker + Team Experiences . In Growth Mindset Parenting , author Eduardo Briceño focuses specifically on the components of parenting decisions to nurture a child's belief in their ability to grow in a malleable manner.

Applying this to fostering the growth mindset within a school culture, we benefit from first breaking down the components of a growth mindset as it applies to teaching and learning within our schools. At our school, we have identified four areas of focus in nurturing a growth mindset.

Flexibility & Adaptability

Dweck's work informs us that a fixed mindset stems from a static definition of self; thus, in our school, we have focused attention on the value of flexibility. To establish and maintain a flexible, evolving definition of self and one's abilities, it seems important to experience flexibility. While there are a number of conditions which cause teachers and students to flexibly adapt, the practice of intentional flexibility allows teachers and students to experience it themselves in different contexts and to develop skills and mindset associated with each. Here's how it looks in action:

Teachers. Developing a culture of flexible grouping and collaboration among teachers is one way in which teachers can experience variety in their practice. At our school, we have teacher committees, taskforces, and flexible team teaching which serve this purpose. We also award green rubber bands of collaboration during faculty meetings to acknowledge sharing of flexibility and collaboration stories which have yielded progress. Faculty members then place the bands around a ball which grows throughout the year. Teachers who earn the ball and bands for the week keep it in their classrooms until the next share. It's a somewhat silly, yet effective symbol of our growing strength through flexibility and collaboration.

Students. Teachers who differentiate instruction are likely familiar with the concept of flexible grouping in which students are placed in a variety of learning or project groups throughout the year. In their book Leadership for Differentiating School and Classrooms , authors Carol Ann Tomlinson and Susan Demirsky Allan outline a method for flexibly grouping students by readiness, interest, and learning profile, sometimes through teacher design and other times through student choice. At our school, we employ these methods and Google Forms to solicit student responses which help inform our flexible groups.

For both teachers and students, the use of data to inform both the grouping methods and learning pathways is important. Students and teachers can utilize data from such sources as surveys, adaptive e-learning programs, ongoing formative assessment, student reflections on progress, and teacher observations.

Passion Pathways

Circling back to Dweck's definition of a growth mindset, the opportunity to explore new passions is key. However, passion-based learning and the conventional definition of a passion are two different concepts. The question, "What is your passion?" comes from a fixed mindset as the answer is expected to be unwavering in commitment and interest. In contrast, passion-based learning, which asked the question, "What are you most excited to learn about in this moment?" promotes a growth mindset. The following approaches can generate passion pathways for both students and teachers.

Teachers. Though standards are important in learning, teachers can still experience high creativity and academic freedom if empowered as partners in building learning experiences for students. At our school, teachers are key constituents in designing project-based learning and the overall curricular experience. However, it is important to approach this planning with the right amount of time set aside for collaboration.

Students. Students can also be empowered as drivers of their learning so as to discover new passions. The mini-mester or internship are examples of student-driven, passion-based projects. At our school, we use Google Forms to solicit passion project ideas from both teachers and students, and then collaborate to build out experiences. Student-run clubs are another way schools are promoting passion learning among students, but where this kind of passion pathway can make its way into the classroom, growth mindset is enhanced.

Agency & Empowerment

As individuals, we most readily believe we can change something if we have control over it. For teachers and students, that means learning must be something that happens through us, and not to us. By personalizing both the professional pathway for teachers and the learning pathway for students, we are able to instill a driver mentality for both groups within our school. The questions, "What do I want to go?" and "How am I going to get there?" can become mantras to this type of practice. In action, we see this through our approach to professional development and through student-led conferences.

Teachers. Teachers at our school participate in a personalized professional development process, starting with their own self-reflection and goal identification in the Professional Growth Plan . This living document is then used to guide both PD experiences and classroom observations, with teachers as active agents of their journey. Last year, this involved a choice-based PD day where teachers set their own agenda. We have also led "unconference" style learning days where teachers run workshops. This year, teachers have a variety of pathways at their fingertips through the implementation of the Redbird Professional Development Platform .

Students. To build agency and empower students as drivers of their own learning, we run student-led conferences instead of traditional parent-teacher conferences. In the driver's seat, students set the agenda and lead the discussion about their performance in each class, their growth, and their goals. In preparation for the meetings, teachers work alongside students to identify each of these components to share in the conference report .

Fail-Forward Mentality

Failure is an essential experience to developing grit, but while teachers and parents see value in failure on a theoretical level, the reality of it is still very uncomfortable. In a recent post, Carol Dweck Revisits Growth Mindset , the author addressed this very concern:

"My advisee and research collaborator Kyla Haimovitz and I are finding many parents who endorse a growth mindset, but react to their children's mistakes as though they are problematic or harmful, rather than helpful. In these cases, their children develop more of a fixed mindset about their intelligence."

We can easily fall into this trap as teachers and school leaders in reaction to failures as universally high stakes. More often than not, we admonish mistakes as not to be repeated and use systems of consequences to reinforce this message.

At our school, we have asked, "What if we celebrated mistakes instead?" Of course, there is a balance that needs to be maintained so that students do not run wild with failure and celebration, but in the context of mature conversations, thinking about our missteps as opportunities can be empowering.

Teachers. Too often, when parents get upset about a new tool gone awry or an innovative approach veering sideways, our inclination as school leaders is to restrict or prohibit. Instead, we have instilled a golden plunger prize for teachers who share innovative teaching moments which have gone off the rails a bit. Teachers can earn the right to display the team's gilded innovation plunger for the two week period in between faculty meetings when sharing takes place. The first one awarded this year was to our art teacher, who had used a Gopro camera in his class, placing them on the heads of children to record their artistic process...just prior to an incident of head lice discovered! Taking this approach encourages a safe space for failing forward as a team and making strides in our innovative practices.

Students. It is difficult to systematically achieve a fail-forward mentality through whole-group activities. Using inspirational stories such as Nick Vujicic's No Arms, No Legs, No Worries , we have run successful assemblies around failure and getting back up. However, the most important work in this area occurs through our advisory program, utilizing Developmental Designs activities to build trust and engage in reflection, and through the one-on-one conversations we are able to have. Sometimes, consequence is still involved, and this time used as an opportunity to reflect. For example, I recently had a student start off on the wrong foot and land in trouble early in the day. During our reflection (a.k.a. detention) time together, she shared she had gotten lost on the way to school as it was her first time taking the train by herself. I shared that I thought it was wonderful she got lost. She looked at me quizzically and we then discussed how she managed to figure out how to get here anyway...so she had solved it. By the time she left, she had a strategy for getting out of a stress zone and avoiding trouble and a better sense of how she could fail forward from getting lost. Even better, she had an appreciation for the whole experience.

In a Nutshell

In schools and in our daily lives, overcoming our orientation to a fixed mindset can be quite difficult. Thus, we have to design our pathway to resilience and growth mindset. In our school, we use the following roadmap. How can we share our best practices and build this to scale across our schools?

For more check out:
Tiffany Della Vedova is Head of Upper School at The Mandell School. Follow Tiffany on Twitter, Stay in-the-know with all things EdTech and innovations in learning by signing up to receive the weekly Smart Update @TeachOnTheEdge

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How to Build a Growth Mindset into School Culture

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By: Tiffany Della Vedova. A growth mindset must be a prerequisite belief and an easy one to champion. However, the divide between comprehension and practice can be quite wide. As school leaders, how can we bring awareness to this gap and implement practices to cultivate a growth mindset within our schools?

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The idea of becoming a growth mindset school has been over a year in the making. Our Headteacher bought each member of SLT a copy of Mindset for Christmas, and it was the main agenda item at our annual senior team conference. Today I launched the idea of becoming a growth mindset school to all staff at...

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talk

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mindset: the new psychology of success (written work)

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Carol Dweck 'Mindset - the new psychology of success' at Happiness & Its Causes 2013

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For more information visit http://www.happinessanditscauses.com.au/. Also take a moment to check out our Happy & Well blog http://www.happyandwell.com.au/ and subscribe to our newsletter at http://tinyurl.com/lnkcr76. - What do we mean by success and failure? - How do fixed and growth mindsets affect our happiness and fulfilment in life?

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A look at the theory of motivation

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Teachers toolbox - Dweck's Theory of Motivation

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Carol Dweck is Professor of Psychology at Columbia University. She is a leader in the field of student motivation and her research is widely recognised. Over many decades she has developed a highly influential theory of student motivation building on the work of others, notably on 'attribution theory' - what we attribute for our failures and successes.

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talk

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Developing a Growth Mindset with Carol Dweck

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Misapplication in schools

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For many years, I secretly worked on my research. I say "secretly" because, once upon a time, researchers simply published their research in professional journals-and there it stayed.

However, my colleagues and I learned things we thought people needed to know. We found that students' mindsets-how they perceive their abilities-played a key role in their motivation and achievement, and we found that if we changed students' mindsets, we could boost their achievement. More precisely, students who believed their intelligence could be developed (a growth mindset) outperformed those who believed their intelligence was fixed (a fixed mindset). And when students learned through a structured program that they could "grow their brains" and increase their intellectual abilities, they did better. Finally, we found that having children focus on the process that leads to learning (like hard work or trying new strategies) could foster a growth mindset and its benefits.

So a few years back, I published my book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success to share these discoveries with educators. And many educators have applied the mindset principles in spectacular ways with tremendously gratifying results.

This is wonderful, and the good word continues to spread. But as we've watched the growth mindset become more popular, we've become much wiser about how to implement it. This learning-the common pitfalls, the misunderstandings, and what to do about them-is what I'd like to share with you, so that we can maximize the benefits for our students.

A growth mindset isn't just about effort. Perhaps the most common misconception is simply equating the growth mindset with effort. Certainly, effort is key for students' achievement, but it's not the only thing. Students need to try new strategies and seek input from others when they're stuck. They need this repertoire of approaches-not just sheer effort-to learn and improve.

We also need to remember that effort is a means to an end to the goal of learning and improving. Too often nowadays, praise is given to students who are putting forth effort, but not learning, in order to make them feel good in the moment: "Great effort! You tried your best!" It's good that the students tried, but it's not good that they're not learning. The growth-mindset approach helps children feel good in the short and long terms, by helping them thrive on challenges and setbacks on their way to learning. When they're stuck, teachers can appreciate their work so far, but add: "Let's talk about what you've tried, and what you can try next."

Recently, someone asked what keeps me up at night. It's the fear that the mindset concepts, which grew up to counter the failed self-esteem movement, will be used to perpetuate that movement. In other words, if you want to make students feel good, even if they're not learning, just praise their effort! Want to hide learning gaps from them? Just tell them, "Everyone is smart!" The growth mindset was intended to help close achievement gaps, not hide them. It is about telling the truth about a student's current achievement and then, together, doing something about it, helping him or her become smarter.

I also fear that the mindset work is sometimes used to justify why some students aren't learning: "Oh, he has a fixed mindset." We used to blame the child's environment or ability.

Must it always come back to finding a reason why some children just can't learn, as opposed to finding a way to help them learn? Teachers who understand the growth mindset do everything in their power to unlock that learning.

A few years ago, my colleague in Australia, Susan Mackie, detected an outbreak of what she called "false growth mindset." She was seeing educators who claimed to have a growth mindset, but whose words and actions didn't reflect it. At first, I was skeptical. But before long, I saw it, too, and I understood why.

In many quarters, a growth mindset had become the right thing to have, the right way to think. It was as though educators were faced with a choice: Are you an enlightened person who fosters students' well-being? Or are you an unenlightened person, with a fixed mindset, who undermines them? So, of course, many claimed the growth-mindset identity. But the path to a growth mindset is a journey, not a proclamation.

Let's look at what happens when teachers, or parents, claim a growth mindset, but don't follow through. In recent research, Kathy Liu Sun found that there were many math teachers who endorsed a growth mindset and even said the words "growth mindset" in their middle school math classes, but did not follow through in their classroom practices. In these cases, their students tended to endorse more of a fixed mindset about their math ability. My advisee and research collaborator Kyla Haimovitz and I are finding many parents who endorse a growth mindset, but react to their children's mistakes as though they are problematic or harmful, rather than helpful. In these cases, their children develop more of a fixed mindset about their intelligence.

How can we help educators adopt a deeper, true growth mindset, one that will show in their classroom practices? You may be surprised by my answer: Let's legitimize the fixed mindset. 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. (By the way, I also fear that if we use mindset measures for accountability, we will create false growth mindsets on an unprecedented scale.) But if we watch carefully for our fixed-mindset triggers, we can begin the true journey to a growth mindset.
What are your triggers?
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 when students aren't listening or learning. Do you feel incompetent or defeated? Do you look for an excuse? Watch to see whether criticism 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 an educator 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.

My colleagues and I are taking a growth-mindset stance toward our message to educators. Maybe we originally put too much emphasis on sheer effort. Maybe we made the development of a growth mindset sound too easy. Maybe we talked too much about people having one mindset or the other, rather than portraying people as mixtures. We are on a growth-mindset journey, too.

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Carol Dweck Revisits the 'Growth Mindset' (Opinion)

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Carol Dweck, who parsed the difference between a "fixed" and a "growth" mindset, clarifies her theories of intelligence.

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by Dweck

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A brilliant student, Jonathan sailed through grade school. He completed his assignments easily and routinely earned As. Jonathan puzzled over why some of his classmates struggled, and his parents told him he had a special gift. In the seventh grade, however, Jonathan suddenly lost interest in school, refusing to do homework or study for tests. As a consequence, his grades plummeted. His parents tried to boost their son's confidence by assuring him that he was very smart. But their attempts failed to motivate Jonathan (who is a composite drawn from several children). Schoolwork, their son maintained, was boring and pointless.

Our society worships talent, and many people assume that possessing superior intelligence or ability-along with confidence in that ability-is a recipe for success. In fact, however, more than 35 years of scientific investigation suggests that an overemphasis on intellect or talent leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unwilling to remedy their shortcomings.

The result plays out in children like Jonathan, who coast through the early grades under the dangerous notion that no-effort academic achievement defines them as smart or gifted. Such children hold an implicit belief that intelligence is innate and fixed, making striving to learn seem far less important than being (or looking) smart. This belief also makes them see challenges, mistakes and even the need to exert effort as threats to their ego rather than as opportunities to improve. And it causes them to lose confidence and motivation when the work is no longer easy for them.

Praising children's innate abilities, as Jonathan's parents did, reinforces this mind-set, which can also prevent young athletes or people in the workforce and even marriages from living up to their potential. On the other hand, our studies show that teaching people to have a "growth mind-set," which encourages a focus on "process" (consisting of personal effort and effective strategies) rather than on intelligence or talent, helps make them into high achievers in school and in life.

The Opportunity of Defeat
I first began to investigate the underpinnings of human motivation-and how people persevere after setbacks-as a psychology graduate student at Yale University in the 1960s. Animal experiments by psychologists Martin Seligman, Steven Maier and Richard Solomon, all then at the University of Pennsylvania, had shown that after repeated failures, most animals conclude that a situation is hopeless and beyond their control. After such an experience, the researchers found, an animal often remains passive even when it can effect change-a state they called learned helplessness.

People can learn to be helpless, too, but not everyone reacts to setbacks this way. I wondered: Why do some students give up when they encounter difficulty, whereas others who are no more skilled continue to strive and learn? One answer, I soon discovered, lay in people's beliefs about why they had failed.

In particular, attributing poor performance to a lack of ability depresses motivation more than does the belief that lack of effort is to blame. In 1972, when I taught a group of elementary and middle school children who displayed helpless behavior in school that a lack of effort (rather than lack of ability) led to their mistakes on math problems, the kids learned to keep trying when the problems got tough. They also solved many more problems even in the face of difficulty. Another group of helpless children who were simply rewarded for their success on easier problems did not improve their ability to solve hard math problems. These experiments were an early indication that a focus on effort can help resolve helplessness and engender success.

Subsequent studies revealed that the most persistent students do not ruminate about their own failure much at all but instead think of mistakes as problems to be solved. At the University of Illinois in the 1970s I, along with my then graduate student Carol Diener, asked 60 fifth graders to think out loud while they solved very difficult pattern-recognition problems. Some students reacted defensively to mistakes, denigrating their skills with comments such as "I never did have a good rememory," and their problem-solving strategies deteriorated.

Others, meanwhile, focused on fixing errors and honing their skills. One advised himself: "I should slow down and try to figure this out." Two schoolchildren were particularly inspiring. One, in the wake of difficulty, pulled up his chair, rubbed his hands together, smacked his lips and said, "I love a challenge!" The other, also confronting the hard problems, looked up at the experimenter and approvingly declared, "I was hoping this would be informative!" Predictably, the students with this attitude outperformed their cohorts in these studies.

Two Views of Intelligence
Several years later I developed a broader theory of what separates the two general classes of learners-helpless versus mastery-oriented. I realized that these different types of students not only explain their failures differently, but they also hold different "theories" of intelligence. The helpless ones believe that intelligence is a fixed trait: you have only a certain amount, and that's that. I call this a "fixed mind-set." Mistakes crack their self-confidence because they attribute errors to a lack of ability, which they feel powerless to change. They avoid challenges because challenges make mistakes more likely and looking smart less so. Like Jonathan, such children shun effort in the belief that having to work hard means they are dumb.

The mastery-oriented children, on the other hand, think intelligence is malleable and can be developed through education and hard work. They want to learn above all else. After all, if you believe that you can expand your intellectual skills, you want to do just that. Because slipups stem from a lack of effort or acquirable skills, not fixed ability, they can be remedied by perseverance. Challenges are energizing rather than intimidating; they offer opportunities to learn. Students with such a growth mind-set, we predicted, were destined for greater academic success and were quite likely to outperform their counterparts.

We validated these expectations in a study published in early 2007. Psychologists Lisa Blackwell, then at Columbia University, and Kali H. Trzesniewski, then at Stanford University, and I monitored 373 students for two years during the transition to junior high school, when the work gets more difficult and the grading more stringent, to determine how their mind-sets might affect their math grades. At the beginning of seventh grade, we assessed the students' mind-sets by asking them to agree or disagree with statements such as "Your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can't really change." We then assessed their beliefs about other aspects of learning and looked to see what happened to their grades.

As we had predicted, the students with a growth mind-set felt that learning was a more important goal in school than getting good grades. In addition, they held hard work in high regard, believing that the more you labored at something, the better you would become at it. They understood that even geniuses have to work hard for their great accomplishments. Confronted by a setback such as a disappointing test grade, students with a growth mind-set said they would study harder or try a different strategy for mastering the material.

The students who held a fixed mind-set, however, were concerned about looking smart with less regard for learning. They had negative views of effort, believing that having to work hard at something was a sign of low ability. They thought that a person with talent or intelligence did not need to work hard to do well. Attributing a bad grade to their own lack of ability, those with a fixed mind-set said that they would study less in the future, try never to take that subject again and consider cheating on future tests.

Such divergent outlooks had a dramatic impact on performance. At the start of junior high, the math achievement test scores of the students with a growth mind-set were comparable to those of students who displayed a fixed mind-set. But as the work became more difficult, the students with a growth mind-set showed greater persistence. As a result, their math grades overtook those of the other students by the end of the first semester-and the gap between the two groups continued to widen during the two years we followed them.

Along with psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson, now at Columbia, I found a similar relation between mind-set and achievement in a 2003 study of 128 Columbia freshman premed students who were enrolled in a challenging general chemistry course. Although all the students cared about grades, the ones who earned the best grades were those who placed a high premium on learning rather than on showing that they were smart in chemistry. The focus on learning strategies, effort and persistence paid off for these students.

Confronting Deficiencies
A belief in fixed intelligence also makes people less willing to admit to errors or to confront and remedy their deficiencies in school, at work and in their social relationships. In a study published in 1999 of 168 freshmen entering the University of Hong Kong, where all instruction and coursework are in English, three Hong Kong colleagues and I found that students with a growth mind-set who scored poorly on their English proficiency exam were far more inclined to take a remedial English course than were low-scoring students with a fixed mind-set. The students with a stagnant view of intelligence were presumably unwilling to admit to their deficit and thus passed up the opportunity to correct it.

A fixed mind-set can similarly hamper communication and progress in the workplace by leading managers and employees to discourage or ignore constructive criticism and advice. Research by psychologists Peter Heslin, now at the University of New South Wales in Australia, Don VandeWalle of Southern Methodist University and Gary Latham of the University of Toronto shows that managers who have a fixed mind-set are less likely to seek or welcome feedback from their employees than are managers with a growth mind-set. Presumably, managers with a growth mind-set see themselves as works-in-progress and understand that they need feedback to improve, whereas bosses with a fixed mind-set are more likely to see criticism as reflecting their underlying level of competence. Assuming that other people are not capable of changing either, executives with a fixed mind-set are also less likely to mentor their underlings. But after Heslin, VandeWalle and Latham gave managers a tutorial on the value and principles of the growth mind-set, supervisors became more willing to coach their employees and gave more useful advice.

Mind-set can affect the quality and longevity of personal relationships as well, through people's willingness-or unwillingness-to deal with difficulties. Those with a fixed mind-set are less likely than those with a growth mind-set to broach problems in their relationships and to try to solve them, according to a 2006 study I conducted with psychologist Lara Kammrath, now at Wake Forest University. After all, if you think that human personality traits are more or less fixed, relationship repair seems largely futile. Individuals who believe people can change and grow, however, are more confident that confronting concerns in their relationships will lead to resolutions.

Proper Praise
How do we transmit a growth mind-set to our children? One way is by telling stories about achievements that result from hard work. For instance, talking about mathematical geniuses who were more or less born that way puts students in a fixed mind-set, but descriptions of great mathematicians who fell in love with math and developed amazing skills engenders a growth mind-set, our studies have shown. People also communicate mind-sets through praise. Although many, if not most, parents believe that they should build up children by telling them how brilliant and talented they are, our research suggests that this is misguided.

In studies involving several hundred fifth graders published in 1998, for example, psychologist Claudia M. Mueller, now at Stanford, and I gave children questions from a nonverbal IQ test. After the first 10 problems, on which most children did fairly well, we praised them. We praised some of them for their intelligence: "Wow ... that's a really good score. You must be smart at this." We commended others for their process: "Wow ... that's a really good score. You must have worked really hard."

We found that intelligence praise encouraged a fixed mind-set more often than did pats on the back for effort. Those congratulated for their intelligence, for example, shied away from a challenging assignment-they wanted an easy one instead-far more often than the kids applauded for their process. (Most of those lauded for their hard work wanted the difficult problem set from which they would learn.) When we gave everyone hard problems anyway, those praised for being smart became discouraged, doubting their ability. And their scores, even on an easier problem set we gave them afterward, declined as compared with their previous results on equivalent problems. In contrast, students praised for their hard work did not lose confidence when faced with the harder questions, and their performance improved markedly on the easier problems that followed.

Making Up Your Mind-set
In addition to encouraging a growth mind-set through praise for effort, parents and teachers can help children by providing explicit instruction regarding the mind as a learning machine. Blackwell, Trzesniewski and I designed an eight-session workshop for 91 students whose math grades were declining in their first year of junior high. Forty-eight of the students received instruction in study skills only, whereas the others attended a combination of study skills sessions and classes in which they learned about the growth mind-set and how to apply it to schoolwork.

In the growth mind-set classes, students read and discussed an article entitled "You Can Grow Your Brain." They were taught that the brain is like a muscle that gets stronger with use and that learning prompts neurons in the brain to grow new connections. From such instruction, many students began to see themselves as agents of their own brain development. Students who had been disruptive or bored sat still and took note. One particularly unruly boy looked up during the discussion and said, "You mean I don't have to be dumb?"

As the semester progressed, the math grades of the kids who learned only study skills continued to decline, whereas those of the students given the growth-mind-set training stopped falling and began to bounce back to their former levels. Despite being unaware that there were two types of instruction, teachers reported noticing significant motivational changes in 27 percent of the children in the growth mind-set workshop as compared with only 9 percent of students in the control group. One teacher wrote: "Your workshop has already had an effect. L [our unruly male student], who never puts in any extra effort and often doesn't turn in homework on time, actually stayed up late to finish an assignment early so I could review it and give him a chance to revise it. He earned a B+. (He had been getting Cs and lower.)"

Other researchers have replicated our results. Psychologists Catherine Good, now at Baruch College, Joshua Aronson of New York University and Michael Inzlicht, now at the University of Toronto, reported in 2003 that a growth mind-set workshop raised the math and English achievement test scores of seventh graders. In a 2002 study Aronson, Good (then a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin) and their colleagues found that college students began to enjoy their schoolwork more, value it more highly and get better grades as a result of training that fostered a growth mind-set.

We have now encapsulated such instruction in an interactive computer program called Brainology. Its five modules teach students about the brain-what it does and how to make it work better. In a virtual brain lab, users can click on brain regions to determine their functions or on nerve endings to see how connections form or strengthen when people learn. Users can also advise virtual students with problems as a way of practicing how to handle schoolwork difficulties; additionally, users keep an online journal of their study practices.

New York City seventh graders who tested Brainology told us that the program had changed their view of learning and how to promote it. One wrote: "My favorite thing from Brainology is the neurons part where when u [sic] learn something there are connections and they keep growing. I always picture them when I'm in school." A teacher said of the students who used the program: "They offer to practice, study, take notes, or pay attention to ensure that connections will be made."

Teaching children such information is not just a ploy to get them to study. People may well differ in intelligence, talent and ability. And yet research is converging on the conclusion that great accomplishment, and even what we call genius, is typically the result of years of passion and dedication and not something that flows naturally from a gift. Mozart, Edison, Curie, Darwin and Cézanne were not simply born with talent; they cultivated it through tremendous and sustained effort. Similarly, hard work and discipline contribute more to school achievement than IQ does.

Such lessons apply to almost every human endeavor. For instance, many young athletes value talent more than hard work and have consequently become unteachable. Similarly, many people accomplish little in their jobs without constant praise and encouragement to maintain their motivation. If we foster a growth mind-set in our homes and schools, however, we will give our children the tools to succeed in their pursuits and to become productive workers and citizens.
-Carol S. Dweck

A for Effort
According to a survey we conducted in the mid-1990s, 85 percent of parents believed that praising children's ability or intelligence when they perform well is important for making them feel smart. But our work shows that praising a child's intelligence makes a child fragile and defensive. So, too, does generic praise that suggests a stable trait, such as "You are a good artist." Praise can be very valuable, however, if it is carefully worded. Praise for the specific process a child used to accomplish something fosters motivation and confidence by focusing children on the actions that lead to success. Such process praise may involve commending effort, strategies, focus, persistence in the face of difficulty, and willingness to take on challenges. The following are examples of such communications:
You did a good job drawing. I like the detail you added to the people's faces. You really studied for your social studies test. You read the material over several times, outlined it and tested yourself on it. It really worked! I like the way you tried a lot of different strategies on that math problem until you finally got it. That was a hard English assignment, but you stuck with it until you got it done. You stayed at your desk and kept your concentration. That's great! I like that you took on that challenging project for your science class. It will take a lot of work-doing the research, designing the apparatus, making the parts and building it. You are going to learn a lot of great things.
Parents and teachers can also teach children to enjoy the process of learning by expressing positive views of challenges, effort and mistakes. Here are some examples:
Boy, this is hard-this is fun. Oh, sorry, that was too easy-no fun. Let's do something more challenging that you can learn from. Let's all talk about what we struggled with today and learned from. I'll go first. Mistakes are so interesting. Here's a wonderful mistake.
Let's see what we can learn from it.
-C.S.D.

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A brilliant student, Jonathan sailed through grade school. He completed his assignments easily and routinely earned As. Jonathan puzzled over why some of his classmates struggled, and his parents told him he had a special gift. In the seventh grade, however, Jonathan suddenly lost interest in school, refusing to do homework or study for tests.

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Dweck’s Stanford homepage, including lots of papers in PDF form you can download and read.

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Carol Dweck's Profile | Stanford Profiles

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Carol Dweck is part of Stanford Profiles, official site for faculty, postdocs, students and staff information (Expertise, Bio, Research, Publications, and more). The site facilitates research and collaboration in academic endeavors.

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Carol's profile

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Carol Dweck is a pioneering researcher in the field of motivation, why people succeed (or don’t) and how to foster success.

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- a biography of Dweck, a homepage for her book, and links to various articles.