Growth mindset is the belief that people can develop and finesse specific abilities through hard work and dedication while gaining a love for learning and resilience to obtain great accomplishments.

Over 30 years ago, Carol Dweck and her colleagues became interested in students’ attitudes about failure.

They noticed that some students rebounded while other students seemed devastated by even the smallest setbacks. After studying the behavior of thousands of children, Dr. Dweck coined the terms fixed mindset and growth mindset to describe the underlying beliefs people have about learning.

Ways to Use Growth Mindset in the Classroom

  1. Design classroom activities that involve cooperative — rather than competitive or individualistic — work.
  2. Help students focus on the value and process of learning and when students succeed, praise their efforts and strategies as opposed to their intelligence.
  3. Think about setting achievable micro-goals to encourage students’ consistent, incremental progress.

What Kind of Mindset Do You Have?


Fixed Mindset

Growth Mindset

Believes that abilities are fixed

Believes that abilities can grow and change

Gives up easily and fears failure

Works to overcome challenges and isn’t afraid to fail

Avoids making mistakes

Sees mistakes as learning opportunities

Resents constructive criticism

Welcomes both positive and negative feedback

Looks for the easy way out

Puts in effort to achieve excellence

Only cares about the end result

Focuses on the process

Measures success against others’ accomplishments

Measures success by personal growth

Explore Growth Mindset in Your Own Classroom

Eduspire offers an online course called Growth Mindset in the Classroom (EDU 917), and you can enroll anytime the course is available. This course will further research and define fixed and growth mindset and how to appropriately implement technology in the classroom to establish a growth mindset. Click below for more information.