Why Growth Mindset Matters
Review
So far, you’ve explored how to collect meaningful data through a variety of tools—from rubrics and checklists to personal narratives and reflections. You’ve analyzed what each tool reveals about student progress, considered how they align with your student outcomes, and started to build an assessment plan that reflects what matters most in your microschool.
At the very beginning of this training, we named three goals that should be at the heart of any meaningful assessment culture:
- Strengths: Help students see what they’re good at.
- Growth: Support growth in key skills and competencies.
- Reflection: Give students opportunities to tell the story of their progress so they see themselves as lifelong learners, capable of growing through effort and reflection.
Why Growth Mindset Matters
According to leading researchers like Carol Dweck, people tend to approach learning with either a fixed mindset or a growth mindset:
- A fixed mindset says, “I’m just not good at this.”
- A growth mindset says, “I can get better with effort and practice.”
Our job is to help students build and strengthen a growth mindset—not just so they can succeed in school, but so they’re equipped for life.
To be a lifelong learner, you need to believe two things:
- You can get better.
- You know how to get better.
That’s why student-led assessment matters. When students reflect on their learning, name their goals, identify their strengths, and track their own progress—they’re not just developing skills. They’re developing belief.
How This Training Supports Growth Mindset
Every strategy you explored in this course is designed to help students develop confidence, motivation, and agency, in other words, each aspect of assessment is meant to showcase growth and help students tell the story of growth. Some examples include:
- Portfolios – Students can see their progress over time and reflect on their learning journey.
- Checklists – Tools like the Life Habits Checklist give students clear, manageable targets for growth.
- Reflections – The Purpose and Sense of Self Reflection helps students understand their strengths, passions, and future goals and to reflect on growth with-in a project and from project to project.
- Rubrics – The Academic Skills Rubric gives students language for growth and a path to improvement.
Each of these tools invites students to step into the role of learner and leader.
Think About It
- What strategies from this training will you use to help students develop a growth mindset?
- How will you put students in the driver’s seat of their own learning?
- How might you build in regular reflection, feedback, and goal-setting so students are constantly seeing their own progress?
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