Teachers have profound impact on student motivation, but theories about the best practice and the pedagogical methods to achieve this vary. Instead of technical, teacher-centered, direct instructions that suppress inquiry-based learning, the MindsetGo 2.0 project, co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union, builds on student-centered instructions to shape the students’ mindset towards the belief that their own initiatives matter – a growth mindset. By helping students develop a growth mindset teachers make teaching – and learning – more effective.
People with a growth mindset believe that intelligence and talents can be improved through effort and learning over time. They also recognize that setbacks are a necessary part of the learning process and allow people to ‘bounce back’ by increasing motivational effort. This kind of mindset sees ‘failings’ as temporary and changeable, and as such, a growth mindset is crucial for learning, resilience, motivation, and performance. Those who adopt a growth mindset are more likely to embrace lifelong learning, they believe intelligence can be improved, put more effort into learning since they believe effort leads to mastery, they see failures as temporary setbacks, and feedback as a source of information, they are willing to embrace challenges, the success of others is a source of inspiration and the feedback is an opportunity to learn and make progress.
The project brought together teachers from various countries who were reporting about their teaching cases in relation to growth mindset. Based on their practical teaching cases and activity examples we created the Growth Mindset Toolkit with the aim to bring those activities in several more classrooms around the world.
The toolkit is a teaching tool made for teachers who would like to increase, nurture and develop growth mindset of the students in their class with the hands-on teaching cases ready to use in your classroom. It can also work as a strong reminder for the teachers that growth mindset can really be learned with different activities in the teaching and learning process.
The toolkit provides ideas for the activities that can be beneficial for students to make a life-changing development of the growth mindset. Students learn and strengthen their awareness that they can develop their skills and talents through effort and persistence, as well as being receptive to lessons and feedback. They adult into a person who generally believes they can improve through hard work and trying new learning methods. The teaching cases included in this toolkit are ready and easy to use in a classroom, divided into five chapters. The toolkit consists of 28 activities based on the various teaching cases from partner schools in the project MindsetGo 2.0. The majority of activities are estimated to be completed in one school hour (45 minutes) which makes the implementation of the activities even easier.
Teachers active in the project were an inspiration of connecting a growth mindset practice into the playful and lively activities, which are captured inside this toolkit.
The toolkit is available here.
The European Commission’s support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
