Changes to Reporting

Reports are one of the main ways schools interact with parents.

Changing the make-up of your reports gives you another way to communicate growth mindset ideas.

Here are five examples of what you can do:

Growth Mindset Preamble

Write a growth mindset preamble to put at the front of every report you send to parents.

In this you can set out the aims of the school in terms of growth mindsets.

What you are trying to do and how you think this will help your learners.

This is like having a growth mindset mission statement at the start of each report.

The only caveat is that you must ensure the messages contained in the preamble are echoed by the content of the teacher comments that follow.

Focus on Challenges

Make embracing challenge a central feature of your reports.

In a primary school, this might involve the class teacher highlighting how each learner has embraced challenge through the term.

In a secondary school, this might see each subject teacher setting a challenge for the learner to embrace in the coming months.

Report on Effort

If targeted effort is a path to mastery, then it needs to always be front and centre.

Include a section in your reports where the focus is exclusively on effort.

Give this value by placing it above or alongside any summative grades.

Ask teachers to talk in terms of effort when writing reports and to consistently make the connection between the effort a learner puts in and the progress they achieve as a result.

Give teachers growth mindset vocabulary to use

Provide teachers with a set of growth mindset words and phrases they can use while writing their reports.

A crib sheet can keep growth mindset ideas at the front of their minds.

It also gives you a way to create consistency of language across a wide range of reports.

This is particularly valuable in a secondary school, where a parent might receive reports written by ten or more teachers.

Set learning goals, not performance goals

Learning goals focus on development of knowledge and understanding whereas performance goals aim for a finite end.

You could set both, or you could just set learning goals.

If the latter, make clear to parents why this is happening and ensure that teachers keep the goals precise and specific to avoid vagueness or ambiguity.

Talking in Terms of Character

One of the reasons so many teachers are interested in growth mindsets is because it is about educating the whole child.

Development of character is wrapped up in the approach, just as much as raising achievement, and finding ways to maximise learner progress.

Talking in terms of character fits easily with any attempt you make to introduce growth mindsets to your classroom or your school.

We can talk in terms of character to parents as well.

But what benefits can this bring?

The first, I would argue, is that character is a term many parents will find it easy to empathise with.

While they might not have much background knowledge of psychology, learning theory or pedagogy, they will know what character is and, quite possibly, have their own views on what it means to teach character to a young person.

Connecting growth mindsets to the development of character thus gives you another way to communicate with parents.

Here are three examples of what you can do.

The Characteristics of a Successful Learner

In conjunction with colleagues, define what characterises a successful learner in your school.

Connect this to growth mindsets and create an overview you can share with parents, learners and staff.

Use this as the basis for talking about learning, as a tool through which to plan learner development, and as a framework for writing reports and communicating with parents more generally.

Praise and Celebrate Character

For example, through assemblies, through letters home, or through reports.

In each case, draw attention to the character traits displayed by the learners in question.

Link these to growth mindsets and draw a connection between the decisions learners make, the effort they put in, and the outcomes that result.

Character Newsletter

Start a regular character newsletter to send to parents.

This could be termly or more frequent, depending on your circumstances.

Use the newsletter to communicate about the character traits of successful learners, how this links to growth mindsets, and to celebrate examples of resilience, determination, and effort shown by learners inside and outside school.

Consistency of Messages

Our final idea concerns the consistency of the messaging parents hear from you, your colleagues, and the school as a corporate entity (such as via newsletters and through the website).

A message will always be more powerful if it is clear and succinct.

This is particularly important when that message is first being conveyed.

If parents hear different messages, they will be confused.

They might be confused about what growth mindsets are.

Or they may simply be confused about why the school is sending out mixed signals.

To create and ensure a consistent message, there are a few things you need to think about.

First, prior work needs to be done.

This covers clarification, refinement, and synthesis of your thinking about growth mindsets.

Only once you have been through this will you be able to pare down your message to its basic elements.

To illustrate, consider the difference between these two messages:

• Our school is on a growth mindsets journey. We want every learner to start thinking positively about mistakes, to try things out, to take risks, and not to be afraid of getting things wrong if it helps them to learn.
• We want all learners to see mistakes as opportunities to learn.

For me, the second message is preferable.

Sure, the first message could form part of your communication later.

But the second one is succinct and precise. It is easier to remember, easier to communicate.

The work has been done in advance. The result is crisper, cleaner, leaner.

Second, with your messages defined, you need to ensure that all staff buy into these and are happy to use them as part of their communication with parents.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle here is getting over any resistance to the idea that messages are being imposed from on high.

One way to counter this is through reference to the common good.

Individual liberty is being slightly eroded, but this is so that all parents receive the same messages about growth mindsets.

Which, ultimately, should benefit every learner in the school.

Third, and finally, you may need to look at some of your existing communication with parents and assess whether it fits with the mindset messages you have identified.

If you send postcards home praising learners for being clever or achieving perfect scores, then these will need to be amended as they run counter to the growth mindset tenets you are trying to promote.

For example, you might change them to postcards that praise learners for consistently targeting their efforts and ones that praise learners for spending time at home practising so that they achieve highly in their tests.