Over this fortnight we are focussing on effort, in and out of the classroom. Carol Dweck is the guru for effort and perseverance research, and she has changed a lot of what we now focus on in schools.

Her research has to do with how we view and inhabit what we consider to be our personality. A “fixed mindset” assumes that our character, intelligence, and creative ability are static givens which we can’t change in any meaningful way, and success is the affirmation of that inherent intelligence.  People with fixed mindsets often avoid activities where they might fail, and they therefore maintain a sense of being smart or skilled. 

A “growth mindset,” on the other hand, thrives on challenge and sees failure not as evidence of unintelligence but as a springboard for growth and for stretching our existing abilities. Out of these two mindsets, which we manifest from a very early age, springs a great deal of our behaviour, our relationship with success and failure in both professional and personal contexts, and ultimately our capacity for happiness. 

In one seminal study, Dweck and her colleagues offered four-year-olds a choice: They could either redo an easy jigsaw puzzle, or try a harder one. Even these young children conformed to the characteristics of one of the two mindsets — those with “fixed” mentality stayed on the safe side, choosing the easier puzzles that would affirm their existing ability, articulating to the researchers their belief that smart kids don’t make mistakes; those with the “growth” mindset thought it an odd choice to begin with, perplexed why anyone would want to do the same puzzle over and over if they aren’t learning anything new. 

In other words, the fixed-mindset students wanted to make sure they succeeded in order to always seem smart, whereas the growth-mindset ones wanted to stretch themselves, for their definition of success was about becoming smarter. We use this concept a lot in education, to inform on how to continually promote a growth mindset in our children.