Winning Scotland: Recent Episodes
Winning Scotland Foundation
Hamish Shankland and Clare McGrath at Whitburn Academy joined the Mindset Teams programme in order to address the attitudes and mindset of their students, particularly in relation to maths. With Whitburn Academy among the most deprived schools in the local authority, the teaching team were keen to change their students’ approach to challenges they had previously felt unable to overcome. With a specific focus on language - for example encouraging students to use the word “yet” when they felt they couldn’t do something - teachers adopted various strategies in an attempt to help students tackle difficult questions. Providing a context for them to learn, including arranging for a financial adviser to visit the school as a guest speaker, also helped to make maths more relevant to them. And demonstrating more than one method helped students find the right approach for them.
In this Winning Scotland podcast, we hear from Ashleigh Thomson, a teacher at Stane Primary School in North Lanarkshire, about her experience with growth mindset after taking part in Winning Scotland’s ‘Mindset Teams’ professional learning programme.
Ashleigh had found that attitudes towards maths among her pupils were largely negative, with many demonstrating low self-esteem and low resilience, especially in the P6 and P7 groups.
Surveys conducted within the school had shown most of her pupils believed intelligence to be fixed, and numeracy in particular was identified as something pupils wanted to focus on and improve.
With an unwillingness amongst much of her class to explore their mistakes amid a general fear of getting things wrong, Ashleigh was eager to try a new approach in an attempt at changing pupil attitudes.
After some initial research into Growth Mindset within Scottish education, Ashleigh decided to take on the Mindset Teams programme to try and increase motivation and participation among her pupils, especially those living in areas of deprivation.
In this episode Ashleigh explains how she approached the programme, the ways in which her pupils responded, and how she managed to change their mindsets to the extent that, in her post-project questionnaire, 83% of her pupils believed intelligence isn’t fixed.
Winning Scotland is a charity with a purpose to empower young people in Scotland with confidence and resilience. Our Mindset in Education programme helps schools create and embed a growth mindset culture.
To find out more, please visit the Winning Scotland website. You can also visit our YouTube channel to see more case studies from Mindset in Education.
You can Tweet us @winningscotland or email us info@winningscotlandfoundation.org.
In this Winning Scotland podcast, we speak to Iain Grant from Kear Campus, a school for young people with social, emotional and behavioural needs (SABN) in South Lanarkshire.
Iain began exploring growth mindset as part of a working group at his former school, Smithycroft Secondary. He joined the Mindset Teams professional learning programme here, before moving to Kear Campus midway through his learning.
Despite switching schools, Iain explains in this episode that pupils at both schools faced similar issues; they were struggling with attainment and resilience, and teachers were focused on getting them more involved and invested in a broader range of subjects.
With a particular focus on maths, English and health and wellbeing, Iain created two mini programmes as part of his project: the first was ‘Lift The Lid’, focusing on building confidence and resilience among pupils, and challenging them using stories of people who have (and haven’t) adopted a growth mindset; and second was ‘You’re A Superstar’, a more in-depth approach using real life examples and honing in on target-setting with pupils.
With only 14 pupils at Kear Campus, Iain describes how he was able to bring them - and his fellow teachers - on board with the programme, and how he used one-to-one conversations and tracking documents throughout the project to help gauge its impact.
Using an array of positive and engaging activities, Iain also explains how he created a more positive environment within the school and discusses how he plans to use growth mindset in a wider context in the future.
Winning Scotland is a charity with a purpose to empower young people in Scotland with confidence and resilience. Our Mindset in Education programme helps schools create and embed a growth mindset culture.
To find out more, please visit the Winning Scotland website. You can also visit our YouTube channel to see more case studies from Mindset in Education.
You can Tweet us @winningscotland or email us info@winningscotlandfoundation.org.
In this Winning Scotland podcast, we speak to Lisa Drummond from St Augustine’s Primary School in Coatbridge, who explains how she used the Mindset Teams professional learning programme to improve her pupils’ attitudes towards numeracy.
Lisa had a good understanding of her pupils’ anxiety about maths as a result of her own negative experience with the subject as a child, and her pupils’ Maths Assessment for Learning and Teaching (MaLT) tests at the start of the year supported that understanding.
With pupils from a variety of different socio-economic backgrounds, Lisa had previously read about growth mindset and was hoping it might help to provide a solution that could bridge the attainment gap.
Lisa explains how the Mindset Teams programme was easier to manage than she had initially expected, and after starting out with a small support group she soon widened it out to the whole class.
As a result of the programme, Lisa describes how there was significantly less negativity in the classroom when it came to maths, and regularly witnessed discussion amongst the pupils who would share strategies without needing a teacher to facilitate. As a result, she is now keen to roll out the programme and embed it across other classrooms in her school.
Winning Scotland is a charity with a purpose to empower young people in Scotland with confidence and resilience. Our Mindset in Education programme helps schools create and embed a growth mindset culture.
To find out more, please visit the Winning Scotland website. You can also visit our YouTube channel to see more case studies from Mindset in Education.
You can Tweet us @winningscotland or email us info@winningscotlandfoundation.org.
In this Winning Scotland podcast, we talk to Rachel Metcalfe from Bridge of Allen Primary School in Stirling.
Having heard her own children discussing difficulties and sources of frustration in their learning, Rachel sought to find out more about growth mindset. With a headteacher who was fully on board from the outset, Rachel and her colleagues were eager to discover what impact growth mindset could have from an early stage.
Rachel was teaching a P4 class at the time and describes the “free rein” she gave them to try out strategies, before looking to roll them out across the rest of the school.
Working in an environment where pupils often come from affluent backgrounds and where opportunities are abundant, one of the main issues was the pupils’ resilience. Rachel describes how research - including KJ Walton’s ‘Mindset Melting Pot’ - made her look at things in a slightly different way, and was keen to take on the Mindset Teams programme to see whether it might have an impact on how pupils coped with making mistakes.
This has led Rachel to adopt the view that “if you’re not making mistakes, you’re not learning”.
Winning Scotland is a charity with a purpose to empower young people in Scotland with confidence and resilience. Our Mindset in Education programme helps schools create and embed a growth mindset culture.
To find out more, please visit the Winning Scotland website. You can also visit our YouTube channel to see more case studies from Mindset in Education.
You can Tweet us @winningscotland or email us info@winningscotlandfoundation.org.