Hamlet was right when he said, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”. I have been a lifetime subscriber to the Dane’s philosophy, often claiming that, no matter what happens, you can choose the way in which you respond to it. It’s a mantra that irritates my wife hugely.
Nevertheless, over the past five years, staff at my school have worked hard to generate a growth-mindset culture à la Carol Dweck. I have also written and spoken at length about how to develop a growth-mindset ethos in your school to the point where Huntington has some minor repute as a “growth-mindset school”, whatever that might be.
The thing is, we rarely use the term “growth mindset” anymore. This is not because of the criticism that the theory has faced in recent months, but because we found that after a couple of years of promoting it, students simply grew tired of hearing the concept mentioned day-in and day-out.
A year ago, during an informal chat, a Year 10 lad said to me, “I’m sick of teachers standing up in assembly saying things about growth mindset. Learning from failure, resilience. None of my mates really listen. We are becoming resilient to resilience.”
His comments got me thinking about how often we pay lip service to an approach designed to improve wellbeing or increase resilience, while failing to ensure that our students are really internalising it. Even worse, how often does the relentless push of this kind of agenda actually have a detrimental effect?
We have since re-evaluated our school culture and now rarely mention growth mindset, but have ensured that every single one of our procedures are true to its principles.
Out go the motivational laminated posters; in come policies that have been designed to genuinely change our students’ thinking about what they can achieve and to increase their ability to manage their anxieties. Our decision to stop publishing academic targets for students in Years 7 to 9 is one example.
Publishing targets for individual students can have two dangerous consequences: either students reach their targets and then stop trying; or they get stressed by aiming for an aspirational target they perceive to be beyond their reach, before giving up completely. The latter is particularly damaging. Underconfident students with high target grades will often not try as hard, so that if they fail, they can claim it was because they did not try.
Instead of publishing targets, now our expectation is that all students will work as hard as they can. Our new mantra is “working harder makes me smarter”. It’s a motto even my wife approves of.
John Tomsett is a headteacher at Huntington School in York. He blogs at johntomsett.com
