'Becoming is better than being': Leading our young people to success

We often hear the phrase 'growth mindset' in different walks of life, and education is no different. It is perhaps in education that the concept is most significant as it shapes the potential futures of young people. It should be remembered that although this education mainly takes place in schools, mindsets are also significantly shaped at home, in public arenas, sports field, drama studios, music theatres, etc.

This means it is on all of us, young and old, to consider and question the beliefs and attitudes that we promote and model to our young people about how intelligence is nurtured and built.

Perhaps to contextualise, we should start by looking at the opposite of a growth mindset – a fixed mindset. According to Carol Dweck, the leading contributor to this idea of expandable intelligence, and as laid out in her book Mindset (2007), a person with a fixed mindset believes "that your qualities are set in stone ... you only have a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and certain moral character."

On the other hand, growth mindset is the idea that an individual's outcomes are not predetermined by so called talent or ability.

Rather, intelligence can be developed, ability can be increased by hard work and effort. "It is about believing people can develop their abilities" (Dweck 2007). I think it is a beautiful idea that we are not preordained to reach a certain level, instead we can, with the right focus and effort, achieve more than we (and often others) initially thought possible.

In the age of the 'quick fix' where we have so many answers at our fingertips through online search engine results and various AI tools at our disposal, it is easy for young people to think that hard work is no longer needed to achieve what they set out to accomplish.

In fact, this has probably made it harder for young people of today as they are lacking the skills required to deepen their learning, to be able to analyse and evaluate information for themselves. As the adults in the room, we must question our education systems and what they are doing to teach our young people these skills.

Does their schooling encourage growth, reflection, and innovation or is there a predefined, fixed idea of exactly what we want students to do and to become?

Angela Duckworth, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, through years of research on people of all ages, but with a specific focus on adolescents, summarises in her book Grit (2016) that it is not IQ that determines the success of an individual, but the level of perseverance and passion invested in achieving a long-term goal – Duckworth calls it, 'Grit'.

Whilst she acknowledges that it is not the only factor in determining success, it is nonetheless incredibly important and something that is often undervalued and undernourished in our world today.

At ISML the ideas of Dweck and Duckworth permeate our school philosophy and there are essential ongoing efforts to try to model and teach our young people these beliefs. Some of our classroom/assembly work is based on the work of Steve Oakes and Martin Griffin (2016), who spent many years rolling out such programmes.

Based on prior results, negative experiences, or nonconstructive feedback, students often resign themselves to the story they have been told before about their abilities and simply settle into a fixed version of themselves leading to less than impressive academic outcomes.

However, we believe as educators it is so important that we instil confidence and resilience in our young people, and that we take the steps to model and teach growth mindset to them. This involves a multi-pronged approach in giving constructive feedback, normalising mistakes, emphasising and focusing on process and effort rather than grades, and modelling and teaching self-reflection. The list goes on.

In order to make improvements, students must be supported in looking at the quality of work produced in the past, how much time had been dedicated to schoolwork, the study habits followed, attitude to learning in lessons, time management, and then to see how these correlate with their personal long-term goals.

Young people are astute and can quickly identify a mismatch. Young people must also be emboldened to believe they can get there, despite external doubters, and refuse to accept that top outcomes not possible. Most importantly, their sense of agency must be promoted to support them making significant changes to make their dreams become achievable goals.

In two decades of teaching, the students that I have known to achieve their goals are those that have the belief in their ability to grow. The main takeaway is about the paramount importance of process, and this is what we are trying to instil across our school community.

The necessity of mindset shifts made by students (and sometimes teachers!). Their guided reflections on previous work. Focussed goal setting. Putting strategies and supports in place to achieve these goals. The attitude to meaningful and developmental feedback. And the overall belief and understanding in the long-term dedication to self-improvement.

We live in a culture where many of us like praise. However, as Dweck (2007) says, we need to be careful how we praise. We should spend less time praising the results as a standalone and if students finish their work 'quickly and perfectly', our response should be to recognise that the work was too easy, and we should do something different so they can really stretch their brains and actually learn!

We should also not simply praise effort, as effort is often misdirected. Instead, we should praise the processes undertaken that lead to positive progress in any formative journey, be it in education or any other field our young people are involved in.

Dweck (2007) herself says it best when she challenges us all to think about the following: "Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow?

"And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it's not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives."

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