An understanding of growth mindsets comes from research combining developmental, social and personality psychology. Growth mindset research is based on a belief that our conscious and unconscious thoughts impact our behaviour and choices, so fostering growth mindsets directly impacts learning success.
A growth mindset is preferred over a fixed mindset. It enables intelligence to mature, embraces challenges, is resilient and grows in tandem with inspiration from a liked-minded community. The opposite is a fixed mindset, where people believe the opposite of the growth mindset - that intelligence is fixed and cannot be grown.
In preparing an ecosystem for change, having a growth mindset is critical to confronting the challenges of a new learning paradigm. Given that the challenge is to unite a global learning community, growth mindsets are needed to support the processes involving ideation, prototyping and evaluating. If educators wish to create a paradigm shift, there must be a high level of agility, flexibility and ‘failing-forward’ to deal with continued change. Parents, likewise, must cultivate a growth mindset . Their knowledge of and commitment to growth mindsets will benefit the new paradigm, their children and themselves.