Perth College News

Rethinking Growth Mindsets

Vice Principal

21 May 2024

As we progress through Term Two, we approach a period of consolidation for many students. In the senior years, this presents as the first block of examinations, while many of our younger students settle into the familiar routines of classes and academic tasks. The onset of the colder months presents the challenge to maintain motivation, particularly leading up to the halfway point of the year.

The ideas around growth mindsets have become prevalent in schools, and education commentators and teachers often discuss this in relation to student achievement, study skills and learning new content. Dr David Yeager, Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas, Austin, and the author of the forthcoming book “10 to 25.” is considered a world-leading researcher into mindsets, including growth mindset, and is an expert in understanding how stress is performance enhancing. Prior to his academic career, Dr Yeager also spent time as a K – 8 English, PE, and Computer Teacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He has worked closely with Professor Carol Dweck at Stanford University, where Professor Dweck’s research is often attributed to the understanding of growth mindsets. In a recent podcast, he was interviewed by Professor Andrew Huberman¹, a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at the Stanford School of Medicine.

Growth mindset defined

According to Dr Yeager, a growth mindset is simply the belief that your abilities or your potential in some domain can change. Part of the confusion that exists, particularly when working with students in schools, is that people misinterpret the growth mindset to mean if you try hard, then you can do anything. This is incorrect, and a deeper understanding of the growth mindset, according to Dr Yeager, is that under the right conditions, with the right support, change is possible. Additionally, the mechanism for this change is the openness and willingness to self-improve.

Dr Yeager has also emphasised that so much of getting better at things involves reappraising the stress or anxiety response. The friction that someone feels when they can’t perform something well, or when things feel overwhelming or confusing, can be compared, according to Dr Yeager, to the physiological stress response when exercising.

Imagine your brain is like a muscle, capable of growing and getting stronger with exercise, much like how our bodies respond to physical activity. When we lift weights or run up a hill, our muscles burn, and our lungs ache. But we know this discomfort signals growth; it’s our body adapting to the challenge.

Similarly, in learning, we often misunderstand frustration or confusion as signs of failure instead of seeing them as signals for growth. Effort is key, but many mistakenly believe that if something is hard, it means they’re doing it wrong, echoing a fixed mindset that suggests abilities can’t change. The beliefs we form about effort play a pivotal role, as simply telling someone to try harder isn’t enough if they perceive effort as a sign of lacking potential. When we understand and compare the physiological response to stress and frustration, such as when our heart rate increases, or our palms become sweaty during challenging moments, we can come to understand how our minds can also experience a similar stress response.

Dr Yeager’s research explores how viewing this stress as enhancing, rather than debilitating, can change how our body will react. The benefit for students is that they learn to reframe academic stress as a resource for improvement, coupled with a growth mindset. When students learn to welcome challenges and embrace difficulty, their potential to optimise performance and foster resilience improves, much like our physical fitness improves. So, whilst it may be more challenging to go outside and exercise in the colder months of the year, we can exercise our academic muscles regardless of the time of year and observe our incremental gains in this domain.