From the Assistant Principal

Assistant principal's Report

Growth Mindset

One of the most influential phenomena in education over the last two decades has been that of the “growth mindset”. This refers to the beliefs a student has about various capacities such as their intelligence, their ability in areas such as maths, their personality and creative ability.

Proponents of the growth mindset believe these capacities can be developed or “grown” through learning and effort. The alternative perspective is the “fixed mindset”. This assumes these capacities are fixed and unable to be changed.

The theory of the growth versus fixed mindset was first proposed in 1998 by American psychologist Carol Dweck and paediatric surgeon Claudia Mueller. It grew out of studies they led, in which primary school children were engaged in a task, and then praised either for their existing capacities, such as intelligence, or the effort they invested in the task.

Researchers monitored how the students felt, thought and behaved in subsequent more difficult tasks.

The students who were praised for their effort were more likely to persist with finding a solution to the task. They were also more likely to seek feedback about how to improve. Those praised for their intelligence were less likely to persist with the more difficult tasks and to seek feedback on how their peers did on the task.

These findings led to the inference that a fixed mindset was less conducive to learning than a growth mindset. This notion has a lot of support in cognitive and behavioural science.

What’s the evidence?

Psychologists have been researching the notion of a mindset – a set of assumptions or methods people have, and how these influence motivations or behaviour – for over a century.

The growth mindset has its roots in Stanford University psychologist Alan Bandura’s 1970s social learning theory of a positive self-efficacy. This is a person’s belief in their ability to succeed in specific situations or to accomplish a task.

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The growth mindset is also a re-branding of the 1980-90s study of achievement orientation. Here, people can adopt either a “mastery orientation” (with the goal of learning more) or a “performance orientation” (with the goal of showing what they know) to achieve an outcome.

The idea of the growth mindset is consistent with theories of brain plasticity (the brain’s ability to change due to experience) and task-positive and task-negative brain network activity (brain networks that are activated during goal-orientated tasks).

(excerpt taken from the work of John Munro- University of Melbourne.)