SPORT

Student Achievements

Congratulations to Tom Dobson (Year 4) and James Dobson (Year 6) who have both been selected in the Tasmanian Inline Hockey team.

Ben Green
Head of Middle School

Sporting Mindset

This article, taken from Mindset – The fundamental ingredient to success – BelievePerform – The UK’s leading Sports Psychology Website, written by Adam Morris, helps us to understand why it is necessary to know and activate the difference.

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“Why is it that some player’s who are labeled as being “less talented” become more successful than their “more talented” peers? This question has frustrated many coaches over the years, and Carol Dweck a professor from Stanford University, believes the answer is down to mindset. Dweck has extensively examined mindset,  and argues that there are two fundamental mindsets that people use: the fixed mindset and the growth mindset.

“Those with a fixed mindset believe they are born with a certain amount of intelligence or talent, and these abilities cannot be improved. This creates a constant urge to try and look better than other people. Within this mindset you are not interested in learning or bettering yourself, the only thing that matters is looking better than others because; ‘If you are only born with a certain amount of talent, you have to try create the illusion that you were born with a lot.’

“People that possess a growth mindset believe abilities such as athleticism and intelligence etc. can be improved through hard work and persistence. People with a growth mindset generate a capacity for lifelong learning and constantly strive to improve. When presented with an obstacle, those possessing a growth mindset tend to rise to the challenge. Often, people of the growth mindset do not fear failure; instead, they view it as a chance to improve themselves. They adopt the view that ‘it’s not always the people born smartest that end up the smartest’.

“As part Dweck’s extensive research she carried out two simple experiments on the topic of mindset.  In the first experiment, Dweck took over three hundred students of similar age and range of ability and gave them a questionnaire that tested their mindset. The group was split into two; those with a growth mindset, and those possessing a fixed mindset. Each group was then given the same task, a series of increasingly difficult problems.

“The fixed mindset group became disheartened extremely quickly when the problems they were given got harder. They started to blame their lack of intelligence for their failure stating, ‘I guess I’m not good at this type of thing’ or ‘I never had a good memory’.  As a result, most of the fixed mindset group abandoned the task and failed to solve the set problems.

“The findings from the growth mindset group could not have been more different. Despite also struggling with the more difficult problems, they did not appear to blame themselves for their lack of success in failing to solve the more difficult problems. Indeed most did not seem to consider themselves to be failing instead considered themselves as ‘not yet successful’. In contrast to the other group, more than eighty percent of the growth mindset group maintained or improved their performance and applied strategies that helped them solve the more complex problems.”

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As training has already started for some of our Summer Sports, may our teams strengthen their growth mindsets and achieve their goals.

Rev Grace
College Chaplain