At St Augustine’s CE Primary School, we encourage all children to develop a Growth Mindset. This is the concept that intelligence can grow. It emphasises the importance of positive learning attitudes including resilience, perseverance and problem solving.
At St Augustine’s, we aim to foster a positive attitude and mindset about learning where children understand how their brain can grow in order to help them to achieve their potential, embrace challenges, persists in the face of setbacks and see mistakes and failures as a necessary step to growing and mastering useful skills. It emphasises the principle that struggle and failure are an essential part of learning. Children are encouraged to embrace challenge and look for ways to push themselves beyond their comfort zone in a supportive environment.
We want the children to understand that some of their best learning is done when they find things the hardest. Rather than simply praising success, we praise effort and persistence. We believe that it’s important to teach children to enjoy challenges, be curious about their mistakes, find pleasure in making an effort and persevere in their learning. For those children who find their work easy, we provide more challenging tasks. We encourage our children to recognise that effort and persistence help them to learn and improve.
Our children are taught NED:
- Never give up – learn to say, “I can’t do it, YET.”
- Encourage others – spark courage in other people
- Do your best – always be learning and growing.
Research by Developmental Psychologist Dr Carol Dweck indicates that people have one of, or a combination of, two mindsets: Growth and Fixed. A child’s belief about intelligence is an important factor in whether they become an effective learner. Our children learn about the two types of mindsets that children and adults can have, a fixed mindset and a growth mindset.
