Growth Mindset: The 5 Things Students And Teachers Must Know!!!

Nature versus nurture. The age old debate. When we see people perform at the highest level we just assume their talent has come naturally. Probably because they make everything look effortless. But what we don’t see is the hours and hours of hard work they put in behind the scenes.

Take Michael Jordan for example, we know he became the greatest basketball player of all time but how did he get there. Was he always going to be the greatest? Well, Michael Jordan was famously dropped from his high school basketball team. Heartbroken, he trained like a madman to prove his worth. The following season he was selected and from then on he never looked back.

Another example is Albert Einstein, where it was famously reported that he didn’t speak until he was four years old (Einstein’s learning difficulties are up for debate). A teacher once told him he “would never be able to do anything that would make any sense in his life.” We all know now his love and passion for learning was unshakeable. And this dedication to learning turned him into the greatest scientific mind of all time.

So, we know Michael Jordan wasn’t born the greatest basketball player of all time, and we know Albert Einstein wasn’t born the greatest scientist of all time but what’s the difference between them and everyone else?

These two people understood what it takes to become truly great. They understood what is takes to become truly talented. They understood that hard work and perseverance would pay off. They understood that effort counts. They understood the growth mindset.

What is the growth mindset?

A simple way to define the growth mindset is that it is a belief that with effort your mind can grow. It’s really that simple. Now, I’m not sure how I am going to drag this out into an entire blog post but I’ll give it a try.

The opposite to the growth mindset is the fixed mindset, which is the belief ability is fixed, no matter how hard you try. The fixed mindset and growth mindset both create the ‘mental’ world you live in and your mindset determines how you learn.

If you have a fixed mindset you believe your abilities are fixed. And as a result you like to prove how great you are. This influences how they view a challenge, which now becomes a chance for you to get something wrong, instead of seeing it as a chance to learn, develop and grow. If you have a fixed mindset you believe if you aren’t good at something ‘naturally’ you’ll never be good at it. Because of this you’re fixated on ‘performance’, like getting good grades, and getting high scores on test. You are also obsessed with mistakes or more importantly obsessed with avoiding mistakes. As making a mistake is an indication of your limited ability. Put simply you have a “getting it right” mentality.

Whereas the growth mindset is the complete opposite to all of that. With a growth mindset you hold that belief that your ability can change with a little effort, you believe you can grow. If you have a growth mindset you place more of an emphasis on the process rather than performance. Having this view means you see mistakes or getting question wrong as a chance to learn, instead of highlighting a weakness. You see scores and marks more of a reflection of how you are doing now, instead of a reflection of your potential. With a growth mindset instead of having a “getting it right” mentality you have a learning mentality. Meaning you believe anything can be learned with enough determination and effort.

Now we know about the fixed mindset and the growth mindset, the two opposite ends of the spectrum. We also know that Michael Jordan and Albert Einstein’s weren’t just naturally talented, their genius was developed over a lifetime of commitment and hard work. But what does it all mean? How can you use this? What are the benefits? And what is it all about?

The growth mindset is all about being flexible.

You may not know this but the brain is extremely “flexible.” Now this isn’t flexible like a muscle, it’s a little bit different. The scientific word for it is plasticity. The strict definition of plasticity is the quality of being easily shaped or moulded. Now saying the mind is “easily” shaped or moulded is slightly misleading as well. The term that specifically talks about brain flexibility is neuroplasticity or brain plasticity. This refers to our brain’s ability to adapt and change throughout our life. But one thing is for sure this change our brains go through isn’t easy.

To look at how remarkably flexible our brain is we can look at examples of how the brain recovers from injury. When we suffer a brain injury our brain isn’t a simply the same machine with a broken part, our brain doesn’t just have a hole in it. The system reboots itself, uninjured parts of the brain can “pick up the slack” by making new connections and acting like the injured or lost parts of the brain. This rewiring of the brain creates physical changes and is a perfect example of how flexible our brain actually is.

Now we don’t have to go through a horrific brain injury for our brain to change. Our brain grows and changes constantly throughout our life. And this rate of change differs depending on the time in our lives and other environmental examples. For example our brain undergoes rapid change in the early years of our lives. Then the so called “adult brain” is formed. Which happens just after early childhood. For example by age 6 the brain is 95% of its adult weight. Now this adult brain can still change but it’s a little harder. What’s important to know about our adult brain, is that it only changes in response to a change that we view as important or rewarding.

So it seems, you can teach an old dog new tricks. The trick is the dog needs to want to learn this new trick and the dog needs to see the trick as important and rewarding. And it has been shown that exposing ourselves or our dogs for that matter to new experiences can actually spark physical changes in our brain. Again highlighting the amazing flexibility of the brain.

Understanding the flexibility of the brain, neuroplasticity, or brain plasticity whatever you want to call it, is fundamental to understanding the growth mindset. Now we don’t want to subject ourselves to horrific brain injury just to highlight the fact that our brain can change over time. As long as we meaningfully connect with our new experiences this is enough to strengthen the changes our brain is going through. And yes, you can teach an old dog new tricks.

Having a growth mindset bridges the gap.

Bridging the gap is like the unreachable star in teaching and education. How do we improve those students who have been left behind. Now there is definitely no silver bullet for this, but one tool in the toolbox to improve student performance is teaching them about the growth mindset.

Now, I am sure we all familiar with the idea that boys are better at maths than girls. This is probably more of a self filling prophecy. Whether boys are actually better than girls at maths doesn’t actually matter. As according to the research, girls who have received training to help them understand the growth mindset, actually closed the maths gap between themselves and boys of the same age. So what has probably happened for generations is that girls have thought they were worse than boys at maths and because of this mindset they were (apologies for the massive generalisation). But with a little bit of training about the mind and how it works, and with a little bit of training on the growth mindset, girls have been able to begin to bridge this gap.

The same goes for the racial achievement gap. The research has shown that those racial groups who “stereotypically” underperform at school are able to bridge the gap when taught about the growth mindset. This is another holy grail of education, “how do we improve the performance of these groups who consistently underperform?” And again there’s no quick fix or no one size fits all answer to this. But teaching kids about how the mind works and about having a growth mindset does appear to help us cross bridges we haven’t been able to cross.

It also helps with achievement and motivation as well. A group of kids who had growth mindset training showed significant increase in engagement and motivation in class, compared to other students who did not get the training. In this particular study it also showed that the students who received the training continued to show improvement in their grades while students who were give another type of training, their grades actually began to show some decline.

With the growth mindset, believing is being… kind of.

If I am honest I am a big believe in the idea that “if you BELIEVE, you can ACHIEVE!” Or something like that. Henry Ford summed it up nicely, “whether you think you can, or you think you can’t you’re usually right.”

Now I completely understand the counter argument to this. There are some limitations to this idea, they might be physical, mental or logistical, it wouldn’t be hard to find an example to prove this idea wrong. However having the idea that “if you believe, you can achieve” is a brilliant place to start, philosophically. And the research from the growth mindset kind of agrees.

There is a brilliant TED talk my Carol Dweck called “The Power Of Believing You Can Improve.” And in this TED talk she talked about how students with a fixed mindset react to challenges and more importantly failure. These students openly admitted that in future when faced with a challenge they would cheat or find a shortcut around the problem. Now, those with a growth mindset were the exact opposite. They embraced a challenge, they viewed failure as a chance to learn new things.

In one study scientist looked at students who had either a fixed mindset or a growth mindset, and measured their brain activity when students were confronted with an error they have made. The students with a fixed mindset showed hardly any brain activity at all. The students would shy away from a mistake. On the other hand the students with a growth mindset showed a lot of brain activity “…their brain was on fire…” The idea of finding a shortcoming in their abilities really excited them. They were excited about the idea of learning what they did wrong and fixing it.

It appears with the growth mindset, if you believe in growth mindset you will have a growth mindset. And increase brain activity as well.

Now what does this mean for you?

Clearly teaching our kids about the brain, and the growth mindset is super important (just to add another so called “important” thing to teach our kids).

But it’s bigger than just teaching them about the growth mindset, it’s teaching them about the brain, neuroplasticity, brain plasticity, and how the brain works. How the brain builds new connections and how this continues throughout our lives. If we teach our kids these key ideas they are more likely to embrace challenge. They will understand that their intelligence isn’t fixed and that their intelligence grows as they do. They will understand that trying new things and failing, and getting things wrong isn’t a sign of a lack of intelligence but are opportunities for more learning.

And as we move into this crazy new digital 21st century world we will all be living in, having this mindset that makes you resilient to change and failure will be an asset that is infinitely valuable.

I want to thank you so much for taking the time to read this post. I would love it if you could share this with your friends.

And until next time here’s to changing the world.

And by the way, be sure to check out the Elite mentoring blog.