Developing the Right Mindset for Learning

Developing the Right Mindset for Learning - Developing a Child’s Potential

by Jo Charman

Over 20 years of experience in education has been a pleasure and a privilege. I get to spend my days working with young people who are about to start out in the world. When I first became a teacher my focus was on how to ensure children came away from school being able to read and write and although that is still my goal, the right learning mindset has become as important and in my opinion is as vital. 

We all had different experiences at school and we all have opinions of what is important however, 75% of jobs don’t exist yet so what skills are needed? We need to ensure whatever the future holds, children are able to approach a challenge with a growth mindset and resilience. That the process of learning includes hard work and that being in your comfort zone doesn’t allow your brain to develop. Being focused on being ‘correct’ and ‘perfect’ leads children to limit themselves and see success as a fixed process. They need to be open to making mistakes and learning from them, they need to understand learning is a process that is hard, the struggle and perseverance towards success is more important than the answer. 

So what can we do about it? 

We as adults need to model a good attitude towards failure, we need to show children that it is ok to make mistakes and that we can learn from them. They also need to understand that learning never stops, that failure at some point is inevitable and that as adults we are still making mistakes and learning from them.

We need to praise children for hard work, perseverance and improvement rather than ‘being correct’. We want children to approach a challenge with excitement and not fear, believing they can get smarter. Therefore they need to be praised for their resilience, flexibility and persistence to achieve something. By changing the way we speak to children we can change their mindset towards learning and how they approach their future goals.

We need to teach empathy, that everyone is different, that people have different strengths and weaknesses. Teaching an understanding of others supports our understanding of ourselves and helps us understand that everyone has challenges, they just may be different to our own.