Having a growth mindset means more than just accepting feedback and being open-minded. It’s about taking feedback, learning from experience, and coming up with strategies for improving. It’s believing that even if you fail at something, you can still succeed.
Another misconception about growth mindset is that it’s the same thing as effort. Knowing the difference can help you give your child the best kind of praise.
Praising your child’s talent or “smarts” — “You’re really good at math” — can actually promote a fixed mindset. It’s like saying that the ability to do math is just something your child “has.”
Praising your child’s effort — “You worked really hard” — is more helpful. It can help build your child’s self-esteem .
But that’s still not enough to promote a growth mindset. If kids don’t use the right strategies, they might try hard but still not improve.
The most important thing to praise is how they approached the challenge, not how hard they tried or how well they did.
For example, you could praise the way your child solved a math problem. Or the system your child used to make sure homework got done on time all week. This is called process praise. And it’s the most helpful type of praise for promoting a growth mindset. It puts the emphasis on the steps your child took to get to the end result.
By focusing on process, it shows that getting stuck, asking for help, and trying new strategies are important, too.
Mrs Mary-Anne Stenning
Assistant Principal
