The aim of our project was to ensure we provided the children with the life skills they needed and to have the confidence to keep trying should they initially not succeed at something. We wanted to make mistakes and effort positive and relate them to how we learn and progress. Specifically, we wanted to focus on improving problem solving skills, independence, confidence, self-esteem, resilience, and the ability to regulate emotions. We wanted the children to adopt the word “yet” into their vocabulary and to realise that effective effort and learning from our mistakes leads to results, especially when tacking a new challenge. We often hear the phrase, “I don’t do maths” from adults. We hoped that by instilling a growth mindset in our very youngest children, they would develop a can do attitude.
We observed the children at the beginning of the project as they used the resources, noting - the number of times they asked for help, said ‘I can’t', 'I’m stuck’, ‘I don’t like this’, whether they worked alone or used teamwork and their initial reaction when asked if they thought a game would be easy or hard. We used open-ended questions, reinforced the benefits of making mistakes and trying another way and encouraged the children to try again themselves before asking for help. We were able to repeat the process at the end and compare the results. We documented the journey on our wall display with photos and speech bubbles to increase awareness of the project.
We worked with pre-school children who were struggling to try new things, giving up easily and relying on an adult for support both practically and emotionally. Children were selected based on staff observations of solitary play, lack of independence and confidence, poor concentration on a focused task or an ability to regulate emotions. With management support we had time protected for the project to be carried out, observations made, and data collected and evaluated. We ensured the project went ahead despite staffing issues and other challenges. We worked with ten boys and six girls and parental approval was gained, with information provided to them about the project through our school blog. We encouraged all staff and families to be aware of the methods we used.
Our aims of seeing higher engagement, more peer working, willingness to try, accepting mistakes and developing more confidence and self-esteem were achieved, through using process praise and other growth mindset strategies. We wanted the children to enjoy the learning process, value the effort they put into each task and learn from each other. This was also achieved. It would have been beneficial to have longer with the groups to allow more collaborative working, however, the age of the children limited how long they could concentrate for. Colleagues all worked well together using growth mindset language with the children, although it might have been better to have an initial session with all staff to convey the key growth mindset messages, build confidence and understanding first.
We kept to our timeline and plan as we knew our target group was moving onto school. Staffing issues did mean that we had to change the location of the group to outdoors, which meant that more children had access to the resources and were extremely interested in what was going on. This did distract our target children a little and made them less likely to persevere with tasks, as they wanted to play with their peers. We gathered data using a pro forma for each session, took photos of the children engaged in the activities and monitored their progress each week. We captured this activity on a display wall, which included quotes from the children and observations from sports day where we saw high levels of perseverance, resilience and supporting others to try new activities.
We charted our data to illustrate the increase in growth mindset compared to fixed mindset statements from the children:
The improvement was so great that six members of our target group went onto receive growth mindset awards when they went into P1. After returning from Covid, we had noticed a difference in children’s behaviours and an increased desire for empty praise. As we progressed through the weeks, we witnessed positive changes in language, more teamwork and willingness to keep trying:
Feedback from the teachers in P1 noted children’s willingness to try new activities and work together well, both in the classroom and outdoors. In the Early Years setting, the children in the target group were a positive influence on the younger children in the playroom. The children were more independent, seeing tasks through to completion and developing greater self-esteem as they knew they had tried their best.
Staff certainly took on board the ‘praise the process not the outcome’ language frames with the children, which were on our staff wall (see below). These language examples encouraged staff to look at the statements used by pupils, so that even when a child had found a task easy, we had given them guidance on next steps, e.g. ‘What would you like to learn more about next?’ Conducting the project was a good way to reinforce with colleagues the need for meaningful praise and to encourage the effort children were putting in. Staff commented on what they saw the children doing, named next steps in the learning, and using praise more effectively.
Below is the display wall we created, showing the activities and progress made each week:
Many of our children were still learning to play with their peers, and often became upset due to a situation which was not what they had anticipated. In nursery, some children thrive on the boundaries and routines in place, as this gives them stability and structure. Others struggle to follow these instructions and require support from an adult. Whilst we noticed improvements in some areas for the children, we did not see the change hoped for in terms of their emotional regulation. We do still believe that growth mindset can work alongside our early years practice, to assist staff to use language that will encourage children to reach their full potential, understand that mistakes are positive experiences and how we learn.
Next steps for the project would be to increase staff awareness by sharing our experience and the results of the project. We want to direct more people to our growth mindset resources to make it easy for them to adopt it into their practice. Once all staff are fully on board (and families), we are hoping to introduce growth mindset award certificates and an achievement wall to help to embed it into our classroom culture. We want to send our children into the world of formal education with the tools to embrace new experiences, believe they can achieve by increased effective effort, and eventually become, successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens, and effective contributors. Growth mindset is a way to give the children and families these tools. The word “yet” is powerful, and to reach their full potential our children need to embrace this and have self-belief that they can do whatever they set their minds to.