Learners with a growth mindset believe the following:

• Intelligence is changeable or evolving.
• Ability is improvable.
• Learners adapt by using effort and strategies.
• Learners hold learning goals rather than comparative performance goals.

These learners believe that intelligence is changeable or evolving, nurtured by hard work and persistence. In this belief system, ability is seen as improvable. With effective guidance and perspiration on their part, these learners believe they have control over how much their intelligence or ability can improve and work to learn and grow. They are interested in understanding complex concepts and collaborating with classmates. They can also help change other students’ fixed mindsets into growth mindsets.

For learners holding this theory of intelligence or ability, failure is simply a signal that new strategies and more effort must be used to achieve success. These learners use learning goals to guide them. Their pattern of responses and choices when met with failure are growth-oriented. Since they are not concerned that a failure demonstrates a lack of ability or intelligence, these learners are not weighted down by the expectations or judgments of others.

Typical comments from a learner who believes that intelligence is changeable include:

• “I will rise to the challenge.”
• “I think I can, I think I can.”
• “No pain, no gain.”
• “One step at a time.”

Ability includes the skills, natural talents, and expertise learners bring to the learning situation. Ability is what you bring to the table. At the moment of performance, ability is fixed (you cannot change your ability only your effort). The way to increase ability is to exert more effort. Resnick (1999) determined effort actually creates ability—that people can become smarter by working harder. Resnick concluded that education should be organized around the assumption that school should be effort-based rather than aptitude-based. You can promote learning among these students by encouraging them to determine approaches to problems or questions, letting them interpret their findings, and letting them formulate additional questions.