Best Practice

Lived not laminated: Growth mindset and metacognition in the primary classroom

In the classroom Pedagogy
Flipping fixed mindset triggers and developing the growth mindset in our classrooms can be achieved through the explicit teaching of metacognitive strategies and skills. Anoara Mughal explains how to make the growth mindset visible
Image: Adobe Stock

Ever since Dr Carol Dweck’s work on growth mindset hit our classrooms (see Dweck, 2006), much has been written about what this concept looks like and how we as teachers can develop it in their lessons.

However, it is also commonly misunderstood or reduced to too simplistic a level. Is the growth mindset in your school just a collection of motivational quotes on posters, destined to adorn the walls of classrooms up and down the corridor?

  • I can’t do this – yet!
  • Hard work, dreams & dedication = success
  • FAIL: First Attempt In Learning

Get these quotes enlarged and laminated and just like that growth mindset is done. Well, not quite. There is a little bit more to it than first meets the eye.

These kinds of posters clearly show an intention to change mindsets, but there is no evidence to suggest that posters alone lead to changed behaviours. Simply talking about changing mindsets is not the answer either – we need to dig deeper into what the growth mindset actually is, make it visible, and then we need to take action to develop it.

 

So, what is the growth mindset?

The growth mindset refers to the belief that abilities and intelligence can be developed and improved through effort, hard work, and dedication. It is the opposite of a fixed mindset, which is a belief that intelligence and abilities are fixed traits that cannot be changed substantially.

When it comes to learning and achievement, having a growth mindset allows individuals to embrace challenges, persist in the face of setbacks, and view failure as an opportunity for learning and growth.

Metacognition, meanwhile, is the ability to think about and have awareness of one's own thought processes. It involves understanding how you learn, monitoring your own thinking, and being able to regulate and adjust your thinking strategies when needed.

Metacognition helps individuals become more effective learners by setting goals, planning their learning strategies, monitoring their progress, and reflecting on their learning outcomes.

As you can see, growth mindset and metacognition go hand-in-hand.

In recent years, however, there has been a backlash over the growth mindset, with some dismissing it as another fad. But often there are misunderstandings about what growth mindset actually is and, more to the point, how to apply it in the classroom.

Writing in a 2016 article, Dr Dweck herself said that her research has been misinterpreted and it requires deeper thought for successful implementation and impact in the classroom (Dweck, 2016).

Dweck (2016) also says that educators tend to equate the growth mindset with other “nice things” such as “being open-minded or flexible, or with encouraging students to work hard”.

“They often take their existing beliefs and practices and re-label them” as growth mindset, she adds.

She writes: “It takes a lot of hard work to deeply understand the idea of how and why people can develop their intellectual abilities. Even after educators understand growth mindset, it takes a lot of hard work to move toward it … because we’re all a mixture of fixed and growth mindsets.”

Therefore, it is important to work out the triggers of our fixed mindsets.

Recognising and acting upon fixed mindset triggers can be powerful. In many ways this is what we are doing when teaching metacognitive strategies.

Flipping fixed mindset triggers into developing the growth mindset can be achieved through the explicit teaching of metacognitive strategies and skills.

 

Growth mindset and metacognition: Strategies

There are many similarities between the growth mindset and metacognition. For example: believing that intelligence is not fixed; it is malleable and that you can improve your own learning, being motivated to accept challenge, and put in effort, and having a solutions-focused mindset, finding mistakes motivational (Mughal, 2021).

However, explicit teaching of metacognitive strategies across domains can help foster more of a growth mindset, in any context.

One of the issues with developing the growth mindset is that “there is very little relationship between teachers’ mindset and those of their students, or between children’s and parents’ mindsets” (Dweck, 2016).

Indeed, Dr Dweck states: “Children learn from adults’ words and deeds. Therefore, growth mindset must be made visible and compelling to kids through our adult practices.”

 

Strategy 1: Secure success

Secure successful learning. Research suggests a success rate of 70-80% is optimal – 82% (Rosenshine, 2012) and 85% (Wilson et al, 2019) being among the recommendations. This is important in developing the growth mindset. It is a good gauge to set because if pupils are achieving more than 80% per lesson, it means that tasks need to be a little more challenging.

It is important to make successes achievable and visible for all those pupils and particularly those who may not be able to recognise their own successes. Knowing how the success happened through metacognitive awareness improves pupil confidence. It helps to foster self-efficacy and it is a great motivator. Activities might include:

  • Teaching how to use success criteria.
  • Modelling verbalising and ticking off the success criteria as you model writing or solve a problem.
  • Explicitly demonstrating what 70-80% cognitive success looks like.
  • Getting pupils to tick-off successes (which you have demonstrated and verbalised) as they complete tasks.

 

Strategy 2: Visualising cognitive success

Visualising future successes can help develop the growth mindset. Ask pupils the following question: If you continue to achieve between 70% and 80% success in every lesson, what will happen by the end of the year or in the future?

As such, cognitive activities might set a target of achieving 70-80% in every lesson and being explicit about what this looks like.

Use success criteria (see above) in combination with now and future Venn diagrams to visualise success and to predict future successes. Perhaps ask pupils to create posters about what would happen if they aimed for 70% to 80% success in each lesson. This can be referred to all year round and it usually keeps pupils motivated.

 

Strategy 3: Possible Selves Theory

Possible Selves (Markus & Nurius, 1986) is a framework describing the relationship between self-concept, imagined future selves, motivation, and behaviour. It is strongly linked to our identities and emotions.

A Possible Self is an expression of what an individual wishes to be and what an individual hopes not to become (Carrasco, 2020). In short, it is another way to motivate learners. In order to be able to visualise both cognitive success (as described above) and possible self, you need to have an awareness of your strengths and areas to develop and teaching metacognitive skills and strategies can enable this.

Activities might include:

  • Create a plan with long-term goals and targets and break these down into creating new habits and sticking to tasks. This is a great activity at the beginning of each academic year.
  • Get pupils to draw a self-portrait and make a list of their current strengths. This can include academic as well as non-academic strengths, such as being good at tidying their rooms.
  • Ask pupils what they want to get good at over the coming year and set both academic and/or personal goals.
  • Ask them how they think they will achieve this – they will usually surprise you with what they know about habit formation and breaking goals down into tasks, habits, and frequency! These activities can be displayed all year round or be made into booklets to refer to throughout the year.

 

Strategy 4: A mistake-making environment

Give immediate feedback, especially in maths which the research shows is more difficult for developing growth mindset (Mughal, 2021). This helps build confidence by fostering a “mistake-making environment”. Strategies can then be taught to overcome mistakes. However, to avoid over-reliance on feedback, from time to time provide delayed feedback.

 

Strategy 5: Create connections

Create connections between hard work, progress and learning as well as between metacognitive strategies for current successes and current gaps in knowledge:

  • Explicitly demonstrate/model and verbalise the links between working hard and progress and learning.
  • Demonstrate and verbalise the consequences of putting in minimal effort.
  • Explicitly teach the planning, monitoring, and evaluating cycle (the thinking frame). The most important part of the cycle is the monitoring phase. It is here that pupils should be taught the strategies to use when they become unmotivated, find it a challenge or “get stuck”. This is where feedback plays an important role (Dweck, 2016).
  • Demonstrate and have class discussions about how using the metacognitive cycle/thinking frame helps with achievement, shows cognitive successes (strengths), and helps identify gaps in knowledge (targets).

There is a misconception that pupils cannot solve problems unless basic facts are memorised first. However, if pupils can use basic facts in problem-solving, it aides memory recall and retrieval later on and deepens learning (Dweck, 2016).

So provide pupils who lack basic knowledge and fluency with problem-solving questions in a variety of different contexts where basic knowledge and fluency can be practised.

 

Final thoughts

Teaching metacognitive strategies can help individuals develop powerful learning habits, resilience, and adaptability to new situations. By understanding how they learn and utilising effective strategies, individuals with strong metacognitive skills and the growth mindset can enhance their learning and performance in all areas of life.

Growth mindset is not just a set of posters – “it’s a journey, not the destination” (Huang & Aaker, 2019).

“Even once we’ve fully understood what a growth mindset is – the belief in everyone’s capacity to grow their abilities – it’s a lifelong journey to fully embody that belief.” (Dweck 2016).

It needs to be lived, not laminated.

Anoara Mughal is the author of Think!: Metacognition-powered Primary Teaching (2021). She is a primary practitioner of 15 years and an experienced school leader of 10 years. Visit www.inspiremetacognition.com

 

Further information & resources