Mindsets
From Effort to Agency
Effort – A student’s perspective As a student, I’d get a report card at the end of each semester that had two grades on it: one for achievement and one for effort. The achievement grade told me how much I’d learned and the standard I’d achieved. School was about learning, so the achievement grade represented […]
How to set teachers up to succeed with Growth Mindsets
(an extract from my book The Mindset Continuum: Your Key to Growth Mindset Interventions that work!) The vast majority of Growth Mindset interventions in the classroom don’t recognise the journey of becoming increasingly growth-oriented. The expectation is that after a Growth Mindset intervention, students will be cured of their Fixed Mindset and “have” a Growth Mindset. This […]
Has the tide turned on Growth Mindsets?
Most school-based Growth Mindset interventions don’t work! As schools struggle to find Growth Mindset interventions that work, a growing tide of criticism has forced psychologist Carol Dweck to defend her theories. A recent article in TES (“Carol Dweck: where growth mindset went wrong”) gives her response. I’ve been warning that the tide will turn on Growth […]
Four Pathways to a Fixed Mindset
There is a common assumption that someone with a Fixed Mindset is a low achiever, and someone with a Growth Mindset is a high achiever. This is simply not true. As I mentioned last week, in the first chapter of her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol Dweck gives many examples of very […]
Authentic V’s Learned Mindsets
How you get your Mindset makes all the difference! Recently, I was re-reading the first chapter of Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, and something extraordinary struck me. In just the first chapter, she lists more than 20 examples of people with either a Fixed or Growth Mindset. Dweck describes Lee […]
Have you ever been the victim of a personality test?
You know the type of test I’m talking about. You’re asked a bunch of questions. Then you get a nice coloured chart that describes your character strengths. While these tests certainly have their place in schools, if they are not used appropriately, they can send Fixed Mindset messages to students. You see, the problem is […]
Making Mindsets Meaningful in Your School and Classroom
There are many different approaches to developing Growth Mindsets in schools. Some approaches are more successful than others. Over the next two weeks, I’m going to walk you through five different approaches to working with Growth Mindsets in schools. This week, we will look at the three most common approaches – your current Mindset, catchphrases […]
What’s your approach to Growth Mindset?
Teachers and Schools are adopting many different approaches to Growth Mindset. Some of these approaches are more effective than others. In this blog, I walk you through the three most common approaches I have seen, from least effective, to the most effective. I then outline how to raise the bar on your work with Growth Mindset by creating a Style […]
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should!
One of the most important lessons I learnt as an aspiring school leader was “just because you can doesn’t mean you should!” Like a lot of teachers, I found my first few years of teaching very challenging. The “bar” seemed to be set incredibly high, and I had to work hard to learn my craft. […]
Three reasons why Growth Mindset interventions are failing
We’ve got a lot of research now that shows that schools – well-intentioned schools – are trying to change students’ Mindsets, but they’re not having the impact on student learning outcomes that we’re after. There are three reasons for that – find out more in my video below. I invite you to come along to my new workshop, Mindset […]
