Process Oriented Praise

Process-Oriented Praise is a best practice used by teachers to help students develop a Growth Mindset. It is motivational praise that teaches students to appreciate the process. This type of praise acknowledges a student's effort, strategies they used, and ways they asked for help and input from others, rather than praising their innate abilities.

In this article, Carol Dweck, the psychologist behind the Growth Mindset concept, has learned from her years of research on motivation, that the way we praise children can impact the mindset that students develop and how they view their intellectual ability. Depending on what the praise we offer focuses on, we can either be empowering students to develop a growth mindset or limiting students to develop a fixed mindset.

When teacher’s offer process-oriented praise that focuses on acknowledging the efforts that a student puts into finishing a task they can empower students to develop a growth mindset. Students praised for their effort, look at putting in effort and hard work as a positive things that will results in improvement (Dweck). They also will learn that success takes time and doesn't just happen overnight. Praising students’ efforts can also strengthen their resilience, or ability to overcome frustration, failures, and setbacks when tackling challenging tasks in the future.

Process-Oriented Praise that highlights the specific strategies that students used in order to accomplish something is another way that teachers can empower students with a growth mindset. By identifying the effective strategies that students use to accomplish something, we can increase a student’s belief in their ability to be successful. It can help students understand that in order to be successful at something they have to go through a process of experimenting and making mistakes until finding an effective strategy. Strategy focused praise can points out to students that they have the ability to solve problems, they are in control of their outcomes and successes, thus cultivating a Growth Mindset.