1. How to enable other teachers to evaluate their practice to reflect on growth mindset, in order to build resilience in students.
My action research is based on ….. By
Tina Herringshaw

2. What is the issue? Needy students, lack of resilience
The original issue I encountered in my classroom was that students are not resilient and constantly required reassurance in order to feel better about their work and know they are making progress.

3. Key research -
Lucy Dasgupta’s MSc ‘Exploring strategies that foster a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset in previously high attaining secondary school Mathematics students’
‘The perils and promises of praise’ by Carol Dweck
‘Carol Dweck Revisits the ‘Growth Mindset’’
“Students mindsets - how they perceive their abilities-played a key role in their motivation and achievement, and we found that if we changed student’s mindsets, we could boost their achievement.”
These were the research articles I looked at to support my action research.

4. Action research – Year 1 Reflections Working group
Peer observations & discussions using feedback template
Videoing our own practice to self-evaluate
Feedback template complicated
Break ‘empty praise’ habit difficult
Lack of positive praise
Reflections
During the first year, I focused on my own practice, reflecting on the volume of empty praise I used through peer observations and videoing, using a feedback observation template.

5. Negative or even better if…
Feedback
Feedback observation template Echo, Affirm, Negate, Feedback
Echo
Approving tone
Affirm
Specific
Negate
Feedback
Positive or progress
Disapproving tone
Non Specific
Non-specific
Negative or even better if…
Even tone
I used this feedback template from Lucy Dusgupta’s MSc on GM to undertake lesson observations to identify what types of feedback we give to students.
I found that ‘empty praise or non-specific affirmation, was what I needed to try to remove from my verbal feedback.

6. Action research – Year 2 Reflections 2 teachers
Barriers – habit/time/teacher on board
Which strategies build resilience & positive feedback
Meaningful praise?
Evaluating practice through videos – awareness of responses & supports change
Guide students to success criteria for self-evaluation
Realisation of fixed mindset triggers – time, stress
Breaking a habit is very difficult
Reflections
During year 2 I worked with a few teachers interested in the project while continuing to work on my own practice. We raised the profile of GM across the school. We realised collectively that your mindset is hard to change, with your own habits and triggers returning you to a fixed mindset. It was also harder to change students mindsets with only a few teachers so I wanted to work on filtering across a wider school approach.
on barriers preventing us from having a GM and wanted to change my lack of positive found that only thorough self=awareness can you work towards breaking the ‘empty praise’ habit. And by choosing a different phrase to replace it.
Last year , we investigated barriers preventing us as teachers having a growth mindset and
which strategies we could implement to build resilience through feedback to students.

7. “You could have a predominant growth mindset in an area but there can still be things that trigger you into a fixed mindset trait.”
Dweck

8. Year 3 - What is the issue?
Can growth mindset support our PAH students?
Does my department have a growth mindset or not?
In my third year, I worked with a HOD who was interested in how growth mindset would support her PAH students and what mindsets her department had already.

9. Action research – Year 3 Reflections Work with English Department
Observations of most teachers in department
Audit on empty feedback – fed back to HOD
No evidence of negative non-specific feedback
Non-use of negative practice is supported & embedded
Positive non-specific feedback is harder to change.
Reflections
Last year I undertook a review for the English HOD, looking only at non-specific negative and positive feedback. I found that the department overall were already not using non-specific negative feedback, but that most still used empty praise. A few teachers mainly used specific progress feedback, which I linked to raising the profile of Growth Mindset within school

10. Recommendations - Strategies
Replace empty praise (good, well done)
Continued observations/videoing - support change
Danger of reinforcing fixed mindset of PAH by empty praise – switch off difficulties
The strategies I recommended to the HOD to use in their team, were the ones I had used in my own practice that had helped me to become more aware of my empty praise.

11. Reflections on 3 yrs Moving forward Motivation & priority
Long term change, not quick solution
Difficult journey
Easy wins – awareness helps to remove non-specific negative responses.
Metacognition
Moving forward
Although I had not originally set out to conduct a 3 year study, each year the action research cycle raised new areas of interest I wanted to pursue. Overall I found that removing non-specific negative feedback is easier than empty praise and that working with a different department than my own proved more challenging, due to priorities and growth mindset not being a quick fix. In my own practice I have found that my current yr11 students are the most independent group I have had yet, which is interesting to reflect upon. Overall growth mindset is a difficult journey, but through raising awareness to staff, removing non-specific responses can be an easy win.
Moving forward I am going be looking at metacognition within my own practice, which has some links to growth mindset.