How to nurture a growth mindset for early years settings

A ‘growth mindset’ is key for children in early years settings as it helps them to practice perseverance when things gets challenging – vocabulary is the key to success

CREDIT: This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared on Hope Education

A ‘growth mindset’ helps children to practice perseverance by giving them the feeling that they can influence the impact of, or change, the events happening around them. The sooner you introduce growth mindset concepts and vocabulary into early years settings the better children will be able to master them. 

Young children are always learning new skills from every experience and interaction they have; they are ‘sponges’ for all sorts of skills – language, academic, social, motor. Embedding growth mindset vocabulary into these interactions will help to make learning second nature to them as they get older and build their mental resilience for the challenges they will encounter later on in life. 

Key phrases can give children a sense that – even though they might be finding a task difficult or beyond them at the moment – there is a chance that they will be able to do it at another point in time. Examples of such key phrases include: 

• ‘We are still learning about…’
• ‘That was good practice; we’ll get the hang of it the next time.’
• ‘We can give it another try later.’
• ‘We/you haven’t learned to do that yet.’

This attitude encourages perseverance, which can make them more likely to succeed and boost their self-esteem at having overcome a challenge. As educators, it’s important to praise the effort and not the end-product by using a phrase like, ‘I can see you’ve worked really hard on that’. 

Modelling a growth mindset in relation to your own mistakes can also help children see that growth and learning are life long, and mistakes and struggles are challenges which can be fun to overcome. Try using language like, ‘I haven’t learned to draw that yet’ or ‘I still find numbers really tricky,’ to encourage children to keep trying even if they find it hard!