Successful schools have a buzz about them. There is a sense that children and staff are proud of their school and glad to go there every day. There is a contagious pride in hard work, happiness in classrooms, laughing and kindness in the staffroom, the Head’s door is open. The school is in flow.
A successful school engenders a sense of belonging—one of the most important drivers of happiness for human beings. We seek it in our communities, sports, hobbies, work, families and in social media. Seeing others connecting at work, at home or online, when we are on the outside, nurtures isolation and FOMO (the fear of missing out). When we feel we don’t belong, our mental health suffers.
Staff retention, pupil behaviour and progress are all hugely impacted by the values that define the culture of a school. If our school makes us feel we belong and are part of the success story, then we are more committed to align with its values. If its values also reinforce growth mindset thinking—the love of challenge, seeing struggle as growth, celebrating each other’s success, enjoying effort and believing in the limitless potential of our brains—we could have the ingredients for self-perpetuating ‘outstanding’ results.
Many schools have ‘done’ growth mindset—enjoyed an inspiring INSET day but later retreated to more familiar territory. To make growth mindset work, it needs to be deeply embedded in our values and beliefs—who we really are as a school. Having a growth mindset engenders an unconscious positive attitude towards learning that becomes such a habit that it can stay with us for life. It helps us learn metacognition, where we step back from our automatic, often negative, thinking, challenge it and grow our empathy and emotional intelligence. If you then ask your pupils and staff, as Ron Berger suggested in his book An Ethic of Excellence, ‘What do you need to do to fit in round here?’ and the immediate answer from teachers, receptionists, caretakers, high achieving, pupil premium or special needs pupils is ‘You need to be a great learner… get it wrong sometimes, take on challenges, support each other, grow your brain, etc. ’, you know you are on the right track.1
21st century society is driven by social media that values looks, money, fame and pecking order. Social media fuels judgement and comparison, the driving forces that create insecurities leading to anxiety, depression and sky-high levels of self-harm and suicide. Growth mindset is the antidote to social media because it encourages reflection, acceptance and resilience. It rejects the indulgence of self-judgement, and when you fail it says: ‘Get over yourself, you learned a lot from this, get on with the next thing!’ Because growth mindset encourages the habit of metacognition countering our automatic negative thinking about events, it helps us develop and try new strategies when we get stuck. It drives us to seek out feedback even if it isn’t what we want to hear. Metacognition means you can step back from unhelpful thoughts that trap you in limiting beliefs such as ‘I’ll never be able to do that’, ‘Everyone is a better learner than me’ or ‘no-one likes me’. Instead it encourages new thinking and curiosity about learning strategies that may work better.
What are the essential strategies required if we want to nurture a growth mindset in every classroom? How can we embed consistency and longevity that delivers exam results in the short term and the habits that will help bring long-term success and happiness for our children?
