14 BEST Ways to Foster a Growth Mindset in the Classroom (2025)

Wondering how to foster a growth mindset in the classroom? You’re in the right place.

I may not be down with all of the mandated education ideologies of today, but one thing I believe in with all my being is the growth mindset.

According to psychologist Adam Grant, a growth mindset in the classroom is important – but it needs to be properly fostered in the school and classroom environment in order to work.

Growth Mindset has been a mandated teaching topic for years now, and many teachers strive to foster it in the classroom.

While we may teach our students what it means, and what attitude they should have about learning, sometimes we don’t realize how some of the things we say kind of contradict a growth mindset.

It’s not just about teaching a growth mindset, its about embodying it, through everything you say and do

I have 10 years of experience as a classroom teacher, and am a huge self-development junkie. ‘

I chose to step away from teaching, to focus on my career as a full-time blogger. I have read countless development books that have enabled me to earn a full-time income from blogging and couldn’t be where I am now without a growth mindset.

Needless to say, I am passionate about teaching a growth mindset to young students, as well as my own kids, as a way to help them achieve their dreams and accomplish more than what they ever thought they could.

Scroll down below for suggestions on how to foster a growth mindset among your students, whether they’re in kindergarten or high school.

14 Ways to Foster a Growth Mindset with Your Students

These are some ways to not only teach growth mindset, but to actually live it and put it into practice every day in your classroom

1. Don’t over-praise

Kids in North America receive excessive amounts of praise, compared to other parts of the world. This is largely due to a huge movement in the 1980s telling parents and teachers to ‘praise’ kids, in order to help their self-esteem.

You can read more about how that ideology grew in North America here.

I don’t know about you, but as a teacher I felt like I had to say “good job!” or “great work!” for so many things, or that I may be perceived as cold or unsupportive of the student.

But it turns out, excessive praise can actually be detrimental to a growth mindset in many ways; one being that kids become conditioned to hearing it. It turns into an external motivator that has them constantly fighting to maintain that ‘good’ status with you.

Just know that it’s totally ok to withhold praise altogether, or if you do want to praise – make a comment on the effort they’re putting in rather than a blanket statement about their performance or final result.

2. Scale back on rewards programs, or get rid of them altogether

Rewards programs, especially if focusing on individual performance, can begin to encourage students to think with a fixed mindset.

I find that the same kids tend to do well every time, and it was usually the same group of kids who don’t do as well.

While this may be for a reason (of course all the kids are performing at different levels) it’s not something I want to highlight in my classroom. Rewards programs encourage kids to see who the ‘good’ kids are, which only reminds them of who isn’t one of the good kids.

Most classroom management books advise against using rewards at all, and instead focusing on intrinsic motivation in students.

If you do want to do rewards in your class though (even just for fun) then whole class rewards don’t squash growth mindset nearly the same as individual rewards do, and can sometimes encourage teamwork among students.

3. Frame mistakes as learning opportunities

This normalizes imperfection and encourages them to not take personal failures as the end of the world.

One of my favourite quotes is from the movie 13 Going on 30. The mother of the main character, Jenna, says to her:

“I know I made a lot of mistakes, but I don’t regret making any of them.” When Jenna asks why, her mom replies: “Because if I hadn’t have made them, I wouldn’t have learned how to make things right.”

This quote basically growth mindset in a nutshell. There’s no need to feel bad about any past failures, mistakes, or something you did wrong. Because if you hadn’t made that mistake, you would have missed out on the learning opportunity.

They key thing is that you learned.

Pro Tip: If a student is showing signs of self-doubt or beating themselves up over a bad grade you have to give them, try asking what they learned from it. They may not have an answer (you may just here “I don’t know.”) And you don’t have to give them the answer -the answer isn’t important. What is important is that they begin to realize that they can reflect on each shortcoming as a learning opportunity that can teach them something

4. Make sure they know that ‘final grades aren’t the ‘final grade’

As teachers, we’re still required to give final grades (or summative evaluations, or whatever you want to call them.

For students who are young with little life experience, these final grades are the end of the world.

Not all your students will get grades they’re proud of; some will be upset, and some will seem to not care.

Put things into perspective for them – this isn’t their last math test, or their last report card grade. And getting a low grade now doesn’t mean that they aren’t ‘good’ at the subject or can’t improve.

Go back to the previous tip of framing these grades as learning opportunities, and what it can teach them for how they can improve.

5. Take ownership of your own mistakes and failures

While you want to ensure that students view their own mistakes as opportunities to learn something, and improve – you also foster a growth mindset in the classroom by admitting your own mistakes, and normalizing them.

If a child corrects you, then look up what the correct answer is – and if they are indeed right, then thank them for correcting you.

Say you forgot, or that you were mistaken, and you’re thankful that they pointed that out to you.

6. Be careful with words like “correct” or “perfect”

Sometimes these words send the message that there’s only one way to do things – only right answer. And for some subjects, that may be the case.

I’m not saying to never use these words, but be careful how you use them. Often describing performance or final results as “perfect” can sometimes feed into a fixed mindset.

It doesn’t help that ‘perfectionism’ is one of the most toxic traits to have, and science shows that constantly striving for “perfect” in everything you do actually lowers performance quality. (Doesn’t increase it.)

So, let’s move away from “perfect” and instead comment on the effort put in to get something to where it is.

There is no ‘perfect,’ there’s only ‘better’

7. Believe in your students’ potential

Sometimes this is easier said than done, as there are students who have given us every reason to believe that all our efforts aren’t working or getting them anywhere. This may be true.

However – what you see in each kid is only where they are now (or where they’ve been leading up to now.) This has nothing to do with where they could be in the future.

The book Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things, Some of the greatest achievements have been made by people who showed no sign of being extraordinary or particularly talented early on. They were often just ordinary, or sometimes they were even underachievers.

Regardless of where your students are now, it helps if you as the teacher, believe wholeheartedly in their ability to improve.

8. Scaffolding

Scaffolding is the educational art of doing things with them, until they become more independent and then letting them take the reigns.

My favourite way to do this is the three-part lesson: “I do it, we do it – now you do it.” But there are other scaffolding strategies as well, which involve:

• talking about the tasks
• tapping into prior knowledge
• using visuals, and showing many examples

Scaffolding supports a growth mindset because it breaks the learning into manageable chunks, allowing kids to absorb them better.

See a list of great scaffolding techniques in the classroom here.

9. Present problems as exciting ‘challenges’

It’s hard sometimes to know what to say when students complain about how ‘hard’ something is.

The thing to remember is that students shouldn’t be encouraged to view tasks or hardships as daunting or boring. (Even if they are.)

If we want to raise a generation that stands up to the task, then we should embrace hard things and be willing to challenge ourselves.

There has been a rise in students avoiding work under the guise of mental health; anxiety or other challenges. While these are valid, (and mental health education is important – it’s still important to set expectations for students; the importance of trying to meet the ones they’re capable of, and showing that you have confidence in their abilities

10. Comment on the effort

If you’ve gotten this far, you already know that the ‘effort’ should be praised rather than simply the final result.

A few example comments you could make to praise their efforts:

• “See, you took the feedback and you improved it.”
• “Look how much you’ve improved from before”
• “I saw that you were bored, but you pushed through.”

These kinds of comments help students celebrate wins in how much they improved, but not where they are right now.

11. Actively teach growth mindset

Chances are, if you’re a teacher in any of today’s public school classrooms, you may be mandated to teach about growth mindset. But, it would be nice to have this lesson become a part of the classroom community, rather than taught, and simply forgotten after that.

I do recommend teaching kids what is is, and what isn’t (the difference between growth and fixed mindset.) I’d also recommend:

• Putting up a visual somewhere in the class, such as an anchor chart, where they can always see it. Here is a resource for ideas to add to an anchor chart about growth mindset
• During community circles, bring growth mindset into the discussion. Ask students how they would think about the situation in a growth mindset
• See a list of growth mindset activities (aimed at elementary school students) here

12. Avoid perfectionism

Professions like teaching, and also medicine, law and other careers tend to draw type-A personalities who are highly motivated to perform well.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that perfectionism is rampant among teachers. The problem is, the mindset is also a complete contradiction of a growth mindset, and perfectionism is also linked heavily to anxiety, stress and burnout.

There’s also evidence that in the long run, perfectionism doesn’t necessarily produce better work.

If you’re a natural perfectionist, that’s ok – but try to make sure that you are:

• aiming for progress, not perfection (for yourself, and for your students)
• setting goals for yourself and students that are realistic and achievable
• not being overly critical of yourself (or students)

13. Don’t expect growth mindset to happen right away

Growth mindset can take a while to wrap your head around, and completely embrace. We may know what it is, but our thought patterns don’t change overnight.

Depending on the messages we received growing up, it can sometimes take years to fully begin applying a growth mindset in all parts of our life.

So, don’t become frustrated if you’ve taught the lesson, you have the visual hanging in the classroom, and you’ve been modelling it for months and your students still don’t use a growth mindset.

It takes time. Part of having a growth mindset is realizing that no one (not you or your students) are going to master it right away.

14. Embrace a growth mindset in your personal life too

The best way to become better at fostering a growth mindset in the classroom is to fully embrace it as a philosophy not just at school, but in all areas of your life as well.

A growth mindset isn’t just a school, classroom or even an educational thing – its useful across all work sectors, and in self-development.

Although I was mandated to teach growth mindset and foster it in my classroom as a teacher, I didn’t fully learn what it meant or embrace it properly until I left teaching, and began reading books on career change.

Here are ways you can start using growth mindset in all areas of your life (and become a master at passing the philosophy onto young people):

• Never beat yourself up for past failures. If you learned something from them, then they’re not failures. They’re learning moments
• Don’t believe the stories that you’ve been told about yourself. You’re just “not good at” a certain thing, or you. Where you are now, and where you are later (if you improve it) are two different things
• Know that you’re capable of more. Regardless of how mediocre, ordinary or even under-achieving you may believe you are, this is a limiting belief that is holding you back

Fully believing and accepting these truths in your personal life will turn you into a coach who sees the potential not only in yourself but in your students too.

Best Books to Read on Growth Mindset

As a teacher, and now a full-time writer and career expert, some of my best learning about what a growth mindset really means came from the books I read.

• Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things by Adam Grant- I don’t think I’ve ever read something that has fascinated me more. It talks quite a bit about the learning and improvement process; in schools but in the

• The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way – Amanda Ripley. A fascinating book that explores the education philosophies in countries that tend to perform better than in the United States. It follows American exchange students who spend a year in South Korea, Finland and Poland. You’ll hear about some toxic education methods, but mostly some very effective and very different ones related to growth mindset that differ from what we’ve become used to in North America.

If you realizing now that some of the things you’ve been doing in your classroom contribute to a fixed mindset – don’t sweat it, or blame yourself. Part of a growth mindset is to always strive to improve. Start tomorrow with small changes that you can implement to foster a growth mindset in your classroom; but don’t beat yourself up when it isn’t perfect. Give yourself the same grace and kindness that you would your students

Growth Mindset in the Classroom FAQ

Here are some of the most commonly asked questions about teaching a growth mindset to students in the classroom

How to teach growth mindset in classroom?

Teaching growth mindset in the classroom is easier said than done. You can teach a lesson on growth mindset, and do activities surrounding it – but its also important to model it in how you interact with your students, and the attitude you show towards their performance and yours.

How could you help foster a growth mindset in your students?

Fostering a growth mindset involves actively teaching students what a growth mindset means and doing activities surrounding it, but it also involves learning to embrace the concept yourself as a teacher and modelling it through everything you do and say in the classroom

Final Thoughts on Growth Mindset in the Classroom

Hopefully have gathered some ideas from this article on how to foster a growth mindset in the classroom.

Growth mindset has become a buzzword not only in the classroom, but in many other work sectors too – and it’s one that I embrace fully. It has helped me forgive myself for past mistakes, not be defined by my failures, and strive for improvement to be the best I can. Needless to say, it’s an important skill that serves students not only in the classroom, but as they grow up.

It’s not enough to simply teach kids about a growth mindset -we need to foster it by:

• Modeling it by how we view our own performance and the performance of others
• Adjusting our language, and the words we use, to embody a growth mindset
• Changing a lot of little things that we’ve grown accustomed to doing

I hope that this article has been helpful to you! You’ve got this!