An evidence-based UK guide to growth mindset for children: what it is and is not, what studies on praise and the EEF's Changing Mindsets trial found, process vs person praise, how to talk about setbacks, age-by-age tips for parents and what works in the classroom.
"I'm just not a maths person." "I'm rubbish at drawing." "She's a natural." Most parents have heard, or said, something like this. The idea behind growth mindset is that these labels matter: children who believe their abilities can grow with practice, good strategies and help tend to respond to challenge and mistakes differently from children who believe ability is fixed. It is one of the most popular ideas in UK classrooms, but it is also one of the most misunderstood, and the research behind it is more mixed than the posters on school walls suggest.
This guide explains what a growth mindset really is, what the evidence says (including the large trial in English primary schools), and, most usefully, the everyday things parents and teachers can do: how to praise, how to talk about setbacks and how to help a child who is stuck. At the British Talent Academy (BTA) in Sheffield, we care about this because the way children think about their abilities shapes whether their talents ever get the chance to develop.
What is a growth mindset?
The term comes from the work of the Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck and her colleagues, who studied children's beliefs about intelligence, sometimes called "implicit theories". A child with a more fixed mindset tends to see ability as something you either have or do not have. A child with a more growth mindset tends to see ability as something that can be developed. As one of the major research reviews puts it, the theory holds that people with growth mindsets, "beliefs that attributes are malleable with effort", enjoy more positive outcomes than peers with fixed mindsets (Sisk et al., 2018).
Those beliefs show up in small, everyday moments: whether a child picks the harder puzzle or the one they know they can finish, whether they see a red mark as information or as a verdict, and whether a friend's success feels like a threat or a clue.
What a growth mindset is not
Dweck herself has warned that the idea is often distorted. Writing in the Harvard Business Review in 2016, she noted that "popularity has a price: People sometimes distort ideas and therefore fail to reap their benefits" (Dweck, 2016). Common misunderstandings include:
- Just praising effort. Telling a child "you tried hard" after a poor result, without helping them find a better approach, can feel like a consolation prize. Effort matters, but so do strategies and help.
- Being positive all the time. A growth mindset is not about pretending everything is easy or that every piece of work is brilliant. Honest, specific feedback is part of it.
- Believing anyone can do anything. The idea is that abilities can grow from where a child is now, not that every child will become an Olympic athlete or a concert pianist.
- A fixed label in reverse. Calling a child "a growth mindset kid" or "a fixed mindset kid" misses the point. Everyone has a mix, and it shifts with context.
Why mindset matters for talent
For families interested in their child's talents, this is where mindset becomes practical. Talent rarely appears fully formed. A child who loves drawing, coding, football or music still has to practise, struggle, get things wrong and try again. If that child believes that needing to work hard means they are not really talented, they may quietly give up the very activity that could have become a strength.
Highly able children can be especially vulnerable. Children who find early schoolwork easy may get used to praise for being quick or clever, and then meet their first real challenge later on. Our guide to the signs of a gifted child describes why some bright children "coast" or switch off, and our article on gifted and talented provision in UK schools explains how schools stretch more able pupils. In both cases, how a child thinks about effort and difficulty makes a real difference.
What the research actually says
The evidence on growth mindset falls into two quite different groups: studies of how adults talk to children, especially praise, and studies of programmes designed to teach children a growth mindset. The first group is fairly consistent. The second is genuinely contested.
Praise: the most consistent finding
In a classic set of six studies, Mueller and Dweck (1998) gave children aged around 10 and 11 a set of problems and then praised them either for their intelligence or for their effort. After a later failure, the children praised for intelligence "displayed less task persistence, less task enjoyment, more low-ability attributions, and worse task performance" than those praised for effort. They were also more likely to describe intelligence as a fixed trait.
Similar patterns appear at home. In a study that recorded everyday family life, Gunderson and colleagues (2013) found that parents' praise of their children's effort when the children were 14 to 38 months old predicted more growth-oriented beliefs at age 7 to 8. The study was small (53 children) and, interestingly, early praise of children's inherent qualities was not linked to later fixed beliefs, so the message is less "never say clever" and more "give plenty of specific praise for what children do".
Over-the-top praise has its own risks. Brummelman and colleagues (2014) found that adults are especially likely to give inflated praise ("that's incredibly beautiful!") to children with low self-esteem, and that this kind of praise made those children less likely to take on challenges, even though it was meant kindly.
Parents' reactions to failure
One of the most useful findings for families concerns failure rather than praise. Haimovitz and Dweck (2016) found that children could not accurately tell what their parents believed about intelligence, but they could accurately perceive how their parents viewed failure. Parents who saw failure as debilitating tended to focus on performance and ability rather than learning, and their children were more likely to believe intelligence is fixed. In other words, children learn less from what we say about the brain and more from how we react when things go wrong.
Growth mindset programmes in schools
The results for programmes that teach children about mindset are more modest. Two meta-analyses by Sisk and colleagues (2018), covering more than 270 studies of the link between mindset and achievement and 43 studies of interventions, found that "overall effects were weak for both", although pupils from low-income backgrounds or who were academically at risk might benefit.
In the United States, a large national study published in Nature by Yeager and colleagues (2019) found that a short online programme of less than an hour improved grades among lower-achieving students in ninth grade (age 14 to 15, the equivalent of Year 10) and increased enrolment in advanced maths. The effect on grades depended on context: it appeared where peer norms aligned with the programme's messages.
The most relevant evidence for UK families comes from the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF). An early EEF trial in Portsmouth, Southampton and Hampshire found that Year 5 pupils who attended growth mindset workshops made an average of two months' additional progress in English and maths, but the result was not statistically significant, and a separate teacher-training strand showed no extra progress (EEF, Changing Mindsets first trial). A much larger follow-up trial involved 5,018 Year 6 pupils in 101 schools across England. The independent evaluators found no evidence that pupils made additional progress in literacy or numeracy at Key Stage 2. Many teachers in the comparison schools already knew about growth mindset, which may have reduced the difference. The EEF advises that teachers "should be cautious about using the approach as a standalone method of improving pupil attainment" (EEF, 2019).
The 2023 debate
In 2023 two competing meta-analyses were published side by side. Macnamara and Burgoyne reviewed 63 studies and found a very small overall effect that was not statistically significant once possible publication bias was taken into account; in the six highest-quality studies, the effect was close to zero. Burnette and colleagues used different methods and found small but meaningful effects on academic achievement and larger effects on mental health when programmes were well delivered and aimed at the pupils expected to benefit most. A commentary by Tipton and colleagues argued that the second approach better reflects how effects vary between groups.
Praise that helps: process, person and inflated praise
Praise is where parents can make the biggest difference with the least effort. Researchers often distinguish between person praise, which is about who the child is ("you're so clever"), and process praise, which is about what the child did ("you kept trying different ways until it worked"). The table below summarises the main types and what the research suggests.
| Type of praise | Example | What research suggests | Try instead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Person praise | "You're so clever!" | After failure, children praised for intelligence persisted less and performed worse (Mueller and Dweck, 1998) | Name what they did: "You checked every answer before handing it in." |
| Process praise | "You kept going when it got hard." | Toddlers whose parents used more of it held more growth-oriented beliefs at age 7 to 8 (Gunderson et al., 2013) | Keep it specific and genuine, and link it to a strategy. |
| Inflated praise | "That's the best drawing ever!" | Made children with low self-esteem less likely to choose challenges (Brummelman et al., 2014) | Be warm but accurate: "I love the colours you chose for the sky." |
| Empty effort praise | "Never mind, you tried hard." | Effort alone is not the whole idea; children also need strategies and help (Dweck, 2016) | "Let's look at what to try differently next time." |
| Specific feedback | "Your opening is strong; now add evidence in paragraph two." | Feedback on the task, subject and self-regulation strategies has high impact (EEF Toolkit) | Include feedback when work is right, not only when it is wrong. |
A few principles make process praise work. Be specific, so the child knows exactly what to repeat. Be honest, because children quickly see through praise for work they know was rushed. Praise strategies and choices, not only effort. And when something is easy for your child, treat that as a sign they are ready for more stretch, rather than proof of how clever they are.
How to build a growth mindset at home
You do not need special materials or programmes. The most powerful moments are ordinary ones: homework, practising an instrument, learning to ride a bike, losing a game.
Effort, strategies and help together
When a child is stuck, "try harder" is rarely enough. The DfE's early years guidance, Development Matters, describes three strategies that help children "keep on trying when things are difficult": repeating something hard on their own and learning through trial and error, asking a friend or an adult for help, and watching someone model what to do. It also advises adults to take care "not to offer help too soon". The same thinking works well beyond the early years.
Talk about setbacks calmly
Because children pick up how we see failure, your reaction to a disappointing test result or a lost match matters. Acknowledge the feeling first, then move to what happened and what to try next. The word "yet" is a simple, powerful addition: "You can't do long division yet."
Model it yourself
Let your child see you learning something new and finding it hard: a language app, a recipe, a DIY job. Think aloud: "That didn't work. I'll try reading the instructions again." The EEF notes that modelling thinking aloud is one way teachers help pupils develop metacognition, and parents can do the same at the kitchen table.
Offer stretch and choice
Children develop resilience by doing things that are genuinely a little too hard for them, in areas they care about. Development Matters suggests offering children "many different experiences and opportunities to play freely and to explore and investigate", and helping them "reflect on and talk about their learning" with questions such as "How would you do that now?". For older children, clubs and hobbies are a natural place to practise this; our guide to extracurricular activities for kids has ideas by age and budget.
Keep it age-appropriate
- Toddlers and pre-schoolers: describe what they are doing ("you're stacking them really carefully"), let them struggle a little with puzzles and dressing, and enjoy their pride in achievements.
- Primary school: use process praise for homework and hobbies, introduce "yet", and talk about how practice changes what they can do. Our guide to child development milestones in the UK explains what to expect at each stage.
- Secondary school: focus on planning, revision strategies and managing frustration, and talk honestly about setbacks, including your own.
Growth mindset in UK schools: what works in the classroom
Many schools in England use growth mindset language, and the EEF trial suggests the ideas are already widespread. For school leaders, the evidence points to embedding mindset messages in strong everyday teaching rather than running stand-alone lessons.
- Teach metacognition explicitly. The EEF Toolkit rates metacognition and self-regulation as high impact for very low cost, with an average of eight months' additional progress. It recommends teaching pupils strategies to plan, monitor and evaluate their learning within normal subject content, rather than through separate "thinking skills" lessons.
- Make feedback specific. The EEF's feedback strand estimates six months' additional progress and notes that effective feedback "tends to focus on the task, subject and self-regulation strategies", and that it is important to give feedback when work is correct, not only when it is wrong.
- Watch the language of labels. Fixed ability groupings, "top table" labels and public comparisons can send powerful messages about who is "clever".
- Share the approach with parents. Home and school sending the same message about effort, strategy and mistakes is more convincing than either alone. See our guide to how parents and schools can work together.
Where British Talent Academy fits
At the British Talent Academy, we believe every child carries potential that deserves to be noticed early. Our core problem page explains why so many strengths go unseen, and why existing systems, built around a narrow set of tests, can label children too early. A growth mindset is the natural partner to talent discovery: once you know where a child's strengths lie, the way you praise and support them decides whether those strengths grow.
BTA is building an Early Talent Intelligence platform that helps families and schools understand each child's strengths through guided observation and behavioural insight, with progress shown in a clear parent dashboard. Read how BTA works to learn more, or see our school partnership page if you work in a school or nursery in Sheffield and the surrounding region.
For more practical guides, browse BTA Insights or return to the British Talent Academy home page.
This article is general information for parents, carers and school staff. It does not replace advice from your child's school, GP or other professionals. Research findings are summarised from the sources listed below, which were checked on 27 October 2026.
