4/5 teachers say mindset has led to improvements at school

Between March and October 2021, Winning Scotland surveyed 300 teachers from 30 local authorities across Scotland about their activity and attitude relating to growth mindset in education.

Their responses show that nearly all teachers (87%) are using growth mindset, and the vast majority (also 87%) are seeing a range of positive outcomes, including improvements in:

• pupil attitudes (73%)
• their own [teachers’] attitudes (45%)
• pupils’ attainment (32%)

Headlines – what did we learn?

• 55% said growth mindset was on their school improvement plan.
• 42% said mindset was embedded into their school culture.
• Other areas where improvements were attributed to mindset included:
  • Pupil behaviour (39%)
  • Pupil concentration (34%)
  • Parental engagement (15%)
• Half say not all of their colleagues are on board with mindset.
• One in five said they faced challenges implementing mindset. Covid-19 was by far the greatest barrier, followed by staff changes and lack of collegiate engagement.

About the survey

• The audit was conducted online using a well-known digital surveying tool. Every school in Scotland was invited to take part.
• We reached a mix of education professionals, capturing feedback from early years, primary, secondary and SEBN settings, as well as local government education staff.
• Just over half of the respondents were class teachers, but we also heard from a large number of senior leadership staff.
• All Scottish local authorities were represented in the survey, with the exception of Shetland and the Western Isles.

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2016 baseline
The 2021 survey is the second such national audit of mindset activity. We conducted our first mapping exercise in 2016, when 583 teachers from 32 local authorities responded. Here’s how it compares, and how the landscape has changed.

Is mindset for everyone?
36 of 300 teachers (12%) said they were not using mindset in their teaching.

But why?

• 14 of 300 teachers said they did not know enough about mindset to use it.
• The same number said it wasn’t an area of focus in their school.
• 1% of teachers said mindset is:

• Just a fad, or
• not effective, or
• not relevant to their teaching

What did the teachers say?
Teachers left a range of comments relating to the positive outcomes they had seen from using mindset, the challenges they faced, and criticisms of the approach:

In general, though, reactions to growth mindset, from 300 teachers across Scotland, was overwhelmingly positive:

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