Educational Goals Without Plans are Just Wishes
Howard Pitler explains why growth mindset work needs goals and a plan to make a difference, with an update on research from 2019 to 2023.
Growth mindset for teachers needs a plan, not a poster. Howard Pitler's 2016 column, with an update on what recent research shows.
In this 2016 column, Howard Pitler explains Carol Dweck’s four steps for answering a fixed mindset voice and argues that a workshop on growth mindset is only a wish without goals and a plan. An updated section below reviews research from 2019 to 2023 on growth mindset for teachers and what it means for schools.
There is much discussion on Twitter and LinkedIn about Carol Dweck’s great work on mindsets. Schools are putting up posters touting ways to develop a growth mindset. I have created a few graphics myself on building a growth mindset in students and teachers and the educator’s mindset.
Unfortunately, that’s often where the discussion both begins and ends. A workshop is conducted and possibly a book study is organized. We read that a growth mindset is the belief that the learner can develop his or her talents and abilities through hard work, good teaching and learning strategies, and help from others. On the other side of the spectrum is a fixed mindset – the belief that talents and abilities are unalterable traits and can never be improved. Those learners with a fixed mindset avoid risk and challenges and don’t push themselves to grow. It seems pretty straightforward. Growth mindset good – fixed mindset bad. The workshop ends with a commitment to foster a growth mindset in all learners and maybe a few slogans written on poster board to put up in the hallways. Mindset accomplished and now on to the next thing.
Of course, nothing is this simple. While students may exhibit a growth mindset in one area they might have a fixed mindset in another. For example, a student might be an accomplished musician and still feel she just isn’t good at math. The science fair winner doesn’t believe she can express herself in writing, and on and on. We need to teach our students – and ourselves – to address the fixed mindset and reinforce the growth mindset in all of us.
Dr. Dweck recommends four steps to build or reinforce a growth mindset:
Learn to hear your fixed mindset “voice.”
When you are facing a new challenge does a part of you think:
- What if I fail?
- I don’t think I have the talent to do this.
- I don’t think I should attempt this because I might look bad.
- I knew I shouldn’t have tried this. I better back out and save face.
Recognize you have a choice.
When you are facing a new challenge, you need to make a deliberate choice. You can listen to your fixed mindset voice and back away from the challenge, or you can take action.
When you hear that fixed mindset voice, answer it with a growth mindset voice.
When you hear your inner voice telling you:
- “If you try this you might fail,” summon your growth mindset voice and tell yourself, “Every successful person has experienced failure along the way. Failing is simply the first step in succeeding.”
- “Are you sure you can do this? You might not have the talent,” tell yourself, “I don’t know if I can do this yet, but with time and effort I will be able to improve.”
- “If you don’t try this you will protect yourself from embarrassment and loss of dignity,” tell yourself, “If you don’t try you have automatically failed. Where is the dignity in that?”
Take the growth mindset action.
The voice you choose to listen to is up to you. Over time, you can train yourself to hear and listen to the growth mindset voice. Practice hearing both voices and act upon the growth mindset voice.
We should work to bring out the growth mindset in our students and help them to learn the steps in moving toward a more consistent growth mindset. We also need to remember that as teachers we must model the behaviors we expect in our students. Every teacher should focus on identifying the fixed mindset voice in our head and intentionally choosing to counter it with a growth mindset voice.
Attending a workshop is a good way to see a new way of thinking and to become energized. Walking away from the workshop with a goal to improve without specific goals and an actionable plan is just making a wish, and simply wishing doesn’t make anything happen.
Social Speak
Nurturing Growth Mindsets: Six Tips From Carol Dweck – Rules for Engagement @EducationWeek https://t.co/0wYlJcILTs #mindsets #edchatmena
— Howard Pitler (@hpitler) March 15, 2016
Growth mindset for teachers: what the research says in 2026
Growth mindset for teachers refers to an educator’s belief that ability, including a student’s ability, can be developed through effort, good strategies and support, along with the habit of acting on that belief in feedback, expectations and planning. In the column above, written in 2016, Howard Pitler describes a common pattern: a workshop, a book study and some hallway posters, followed by no specific goals or plan. Pitler closes with Carol Dweck’s four steps for hearing and answering a fixed mindset voice, and with the reminder that a goal without a plan is only a wish. The research since then confirms that idea in some ways and complicates it in others.
What research on teachers’ mindsets shows
Sonja Laine and Kirsi Tirri of the University of Helsinki reviewed 64 peer-reviewed articles from 2012 to 2023 in a December 2023 article in Frontiers in Education. Most teachers reported a growth mindset, though many held mixed views and mindsets varied by subject. That variation matches Pitler’s example of the accomplished musician who feels unable to do math. The review described growth-oriented teachers as using mastery-focused instruction, feedback on process and “not yet” messaging, while teachers with fixed beliefs tended to emphasize performance, praise the person and label students.
The review found that links between a teacher’s mindset and students’ mindsets were mixed, with some studies finding a connection and others none. It also describes what it calls a false growth mindset, in which teachers say they believe in growth without acting on it, and notes that tracking, standardized testing and school policy can block growth-oriented practice. That finding is close to Pitler’s complaint about slogans without a plan. The authors rate teacher-led interventions, teacher education and professional development as promising but preliminary, and they note that most studies relied on self-report and came from Western countries.
Do growth mindset programs raise student achievement?
The strongest single study is the National Study of Learning Mindsets, reported by Yeager and colleagues in Nature in August 2019. According to Education Week’s coverage, nearly 12,500 ninth graders at 76 nationally representative public high schools were randomly assigned to a 25-minute online growth mindset session or a control session about brain functions. The intervention was associated with about a 0.10-point gain on a 4-point grade point average scale, concentrated among lower-achieving students, and both lower- and higher-achieving students were more likely to enroll in advanced math the next year. Effects were stronger in schools where peer norms supported growth mindset, and researcher David Yeager said that in an unsupportive school the effects fade. The Harvard Kennedy School listing of the paper gives the same pattern of results.
Critics ask whether such an effect is large enough to matter. In 2023, Brooke Macnamara and Alexander Burgoyne published a meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin and then a reply to commentaries that summarizes it. They report that 94 percent of growth mindset interventions included confounds, that authors with a known financial incentive were two and a half times as likely to report positive effects, and that higher-quality studies were less likely to show a benefit. They conclude that apparent effects on achievement may be due to study design, reporting flaws and bias. Other researchers dispute this, and the reply itself responds to a reanalysis by Tipton and colleagues that reached more positive results. A reasonable reading is that growth mindset is a plausible and widely held idea whose measured effects on grades are small and depend on conditions, which argues for modest expectations rather than dismissal.
For a longer treatment of the debate, see edCircuit’s articles on growth mindset versus fixed mindset and on grit, growth mindset and the backlash against both.
What teachers and leaders can decide
- Treat Dweck’s four steps as a habit for adults first. Pitler notes that teachers must model what they expect, so noticing and answering the fixed mindset voice applies to a teacher’s own planning, not only to students.
- Write specific goals and a plan after any workshop, as Pitler urges: who will do what, by when, and how progress will be checked.
- Give feedback about strategy and effort, and use “not yet” language where a student has not reached a standard. This is the pattern the Helsinki review associates with growth-oriented teaching.
- Look for domain-specific fixed beliefs in students and in oneself, since mindsets can differ between math, writing and music.
- Check school structures such as tracking and test-driven grouping against the message, because the review and the Nature study both point to context as a deciding factor.
- Keep claims modest with families and staff. The evidence supports growth mindset as one useful element of teaching, and does not support presenting it as a cure for achievement gaps.
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