Mindsets

This week I was lucky enough to attend the Learning Network workshop on ‘teaching intelligent mindsets’ Carol Dweck, Guy Claxton and Jamie Fitzgerald were the speakers. The overarching concept of the day with all three speakers was how we approach tasks and how the mindset we have can impact on the outcome. E.g fixed mind set – in the face of setbacks – hide mistakes, growth mind set- confront mistakes and learn from them. Carol Dweck spoke about how specific focused praise can support learning. Rather than general praise, look at specific praise relating to the process and task at hand. Eg rather than saying good boy/girl you are so good at this, you are so clever. Think about making the praise focused to the task at hand. E.g. I can see you have really thought about your writing and included some interesting descriptive words to describe how the person looked… Children should experience a level of struggle with the tasks they are doing. “Easy is boring” and if the work is easy it means the children are not being challenged. ‘ Let us not pray to be sheltered from challenges and struggles but to be fearless in facing them’- Guy Claxton