3 Basic Steps for Teaching Growth Mindset in Speech Therapy
If you’re just starting to consider how a growth mindset may fit into your life and work as an SLP, but you’re stuck wondering how you can possibly take time away from your IEP goals to incorporate it – this blog is for you.
(Brand new to growth mindset? You may want to check out this blog post first).
While we can (and in my opinion, should) absolutely spend time directly targeting and teaching about growth mindset, there are also so many ways we can use and apply growth mindset into our sessions – without taking a single extra second away from the things you are already doing.
As you read through the following three “steps,” you can consider them somewhat as being in succession – a “less to more” order – with the first being the most indirect, least amount of time spent in your session, and the last being the most direct. I use each of these models with different groups, different students, and different goals, depending on “where” we are in speech.
1. Change your mindset.
Before you can start changing the mindset of your students, you need to both understand what a growth mindset is and also start approaching things with a growth mindset yourself. This could be both in your own, personal life, but also in the way you think about your students, their goals, their ability to achieve, and the way you challenge them.
Research has shown that our mindset toward children and their capabilities can impact outcomes. In a study by Rosenthal & Jacobsen in 1968, researchers told teachers that a small (randomized) percentage of children had “unusual potential for intellectual growth” and could be expected to excel. Spoiler alert: it happened. These specific students later outperformed others on multiple measures, even though they had originally been no different from other students. The mindset of the teachers had an impact on their students.
Your mindset matters. Your belief that your students can achieve their goals can impact their outcomes.
For more reading on Growth Mindset to help change your own mindset and approach, you can check out these books and resources.
2. Change your language.
Once you’ve started to internalize a growth mindset, you can start more intentionally applying it in your sessions. The first way to do this is to start changing the words you’re saying.
Start praising the process as well as the outcome. “I love how you got your tongue back for that R,” instead of just, “Yay! Great R!”
Start praising the work and effort as well as the success. “Wow! That was a hard one. Nice work!” and not only, “Wow! That was easy and perfect. Nice work!”
Set the stage, through your words, so that students are not afraid to make mistakes and know that speech will be hard, you will always challenge them, and that that’s a good thing. It’s how they learn.
“Wow! You did a great job with that goal this week. I can’t wait to work on something even harder next week!”
And once you’ve started changing your language, it’s time to help your students change theirs. It’s possible to do this even without directly teaching about a growth mindset.
This free poster of 10 Growth Mindset Statements to use in speech might help.
3. Directly teach Growth Mindset.
So far, you can see how you can start incorporating a growth mindset into your sessions without taking a single extra moment from speech (if you don’t count your own time learning, that is).
However, over the years, I’ve had a few students or groups that I can see just need some explicit instruction on what a growth mindset is, what fixed mindset examples I’m seeing and hearing from them, and how these might be impacting their progress.
Sometimes these are:
- students who have been in speech so long they’ve given up
- really bright students who simply aren’t used to being challenged or “struggling” with something in school
- students that hate to receive feedback
- students with anxiety about making mistakes
These feelings are all valid. But, I want to show them a little bit more about a growth mindset than just through the subtle suggestions in my words.
Additionally, I want to make sure that the growth mindset work I’ve been doing passively in my sessions is carrying over to home.
In these cases, I’ve directly and explicitly taught students about the mindsets, had them practice using a growth mindset, and even gone so far as to give them homework about it. The cool thing? As the super talented SLPs that we are – we can incorporate speech and language goals into anything! So this doesn’t mean I’m not targeting their language goals – just that I might be using growth mindset as the vehicle to do that.
For example, in this activity, I have students sort skills as easy or hard for them. Yes, we talk about how hard things aren’t bad and how we can work at things, BUT we can also easily target the R sound in the word HARD, or the S sound in the phrase, “This feels ___ for me.” Additionally, the skills included are excellent conversation starters and can serve as stimuli for targeting all sorts of language skills.
So whether you’re ready to directly work GM into your sessions or just want to start dabbling in it yourself, hopefully you have a few ideas of how you can start this process.
A serious note about growth mindset and its application:
While I strongly believe that a growth mindset is important – we must be really careful with its application. Applied in one way, growth mindset can become an unrealistic “you-can-achieve-anything-you-can-put-your-mind-to” mantra or push on students that feelings of disappointment or failure are not okay. And that’s totally missing the point. A push for toxic positivity and a denial of real-life reasons for why some things are more difficult for some than others does a disservice to many of our students, perhaps especially our students of color.
While a growth mindset can be implemented especially within the context of speech therapy without needing to fall into the pattern of thinking that, “If Johnny were to just try harder/believe in himself more/be more positive then he too would achieve his goals,” it’s also important to be self-reflective about our own implementation of growth mindset. For more on this topic and how it relates to racism, check out this blog post by Tamara Russell of Mrs. Russell’s Room.
Rosenthal, R., and Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom: Teacher expectation and pupils’ intellectual development’. New York: Rinehart and Winston.
