What is a growth mindset?

A growth mindset is the belief that basic abilities — intelligence, talent, skill in a particular domain — can be developed over time through effort, better strategies, feedback from others, and sustained practice. It is one end of a continuum first described by psychologist Carol S. Dweck; the other end is a fixed mindset, the belief that these abilities are essentially set and cannot be changed much.

The idea is simpler than it sounds. Someone with a strongly growth-oriented view of maths, for example, is more likely to interpret a poor test result as information about what to study next, rather than as evidence that they are 'not a maths person'. Someone with a strongly fixed view is more likely to interpret the same result as confirmation of a stable personal limit. Neither interpretation is automatically correct — the point is that the two mindsets lead to different responses to challenge, effort, mistakes, and feedback.

Examples across domains. In school, mindset shows up in how students respond to a difficult problem set, how they interpret grades, and whether they seek out or avoid subjects where they have struggled. In sport, it shows up in how athletes respond to a losing streak or a technical weakness identified by a coach. At work, it shows up in how people respond to critical feedback in a performance review, and in whether they take on stretch assignments where failure is possible.

Common misconceptions. A growth mindset is not the same as praising effort regardless of outcome; it is not positive thinking or motivational self-talk; and it is not the claim that anyone can become anything with enough effort. Dweck herself has repeatedly criticised what she calls 'false growth mindset' — using the language without changing anything about teaching, feedback, or the structural conditions in which people learn.

What the research supports. There is reasonable evidence that mindset beliefs are correlated with study strategies, response to setbacks, and willingness to seek help. The evidence that short mindset interventions produce large, durable improvements in academic performance is weaker: recent meta-analyses (Sisk et al., 2018; Macnamara & Burgoyne, 2022) report small average effects with substantial variability across studies and populations. Interventions appear to work best for specific subgroups (for example, students at academic risk) and when they are combined with genuine changes in classroom practice.

What the research does not support. Mindset is not a personality type, cannot be reliably diagnosed from a short questionnaire, and cannot substitute for good teaching, curriculum, feedback, or material support. Treating 'growth mindset' as a label that some students have and others lack tends to reproduce exactly the fixed thinking the framework was designed to counter.

Practical takeaway. The most useful way to use the growth mindset idea is probably as a lens on your own reactions: notice when you interpret a setback as evidence of a fixed limit, and ask what you would do next if you assumed the limit was not fixed. That is a small habit, not a personality transformation — and small habits are what the research most consistently supports.