Grit, Growth Mindset, and the Learning Mindset
By Betsy Hill
We have many words to describe the qualities that help people tackle difficult tasks and overcome setbacks: grit, perseverance, tenacity, resilience, persistence, backbone, stamina. We use other terms to describe the capacity to learn from mistakes and try new approaches: growth mindset, adaptability, flexibility, willingness to change, and motivation. While these labels vary in tone—grit sounds hard-edged and relentless, growth mindset feels gentler and more optimistic—the underlying goal for educators is largely the same: how to encourage students to persist when learning gets hard.
Educators have responded to these ideas in similar patterns: enthusiasm, broad adoption, and then a degree of pushback. Research shows both grit and growth mindset predict academic and life success, yet practical guidance for classroom application has often been thin. The concepts began as descriptions of observable behavior and motivation, not as step-by-step interventions, leaving teachers asking the same question across eras: what can we do to influence how students respond to struggle?
When students encounter difficulty, two common reactions emerge:
- They dig in and persist, or
- They give up and move on.
Teachers can usually tell quickly which students fall into each category. The persistent challenge is turning that observation into classroom practice. Are grit and growth mindset merely labels, or can educators actively foster them?
Angela Duckworth’s book Grit defines grit as a combination of perseverance and long-term passion: a steady commitment to goals that sustains effort through obstacles. Her work has often been interpreted to mean students should simply find their passion and keep working, with repeated exhortations to “try harder” when results lag. That interpretation risks promoting effort without reflection—more persistence with the same failing strategy.
Carol Dweck’s research and her book Growth Mindset emphasize that setbacks can fuel learning. Students with a growth mindset view intelligence and skills as developable; they use failure as information and try alternative strategies. Dweck has clarified over time that mindset is not blind encouragement to exert effort, but the combination of effort plus adaptive strategy: changing tactics when the first approach fails so that effort becomes productive learning.
Yet teachers often lack concrete methods for cultivating these traits. The backlash against grit and growth mindset is understandable because many educators who see a need for these qualities don’t have clear tools to teach them. Compounding this, a pervasive belief persists that intelligence is fixed—people assume talent is innate and unchangeable. That belief discourages risk-taking and makes students and adults reluctant to try difficult tasks that might expose weaknesses.
Modern neuroscience offers a corrective: neuroplasticity. The evidence is strong that the brain changes in response to experience. Cognitive processes such as visual-spatial reasoning, verbal memory, attention and focus, working memory, and the complex skills required to write or solve problems are shaped and strengthened through targeted practice and learning experiences. This means capacity for learning is not static; it can be expanded.
When students and teachers recognize that learning experiences can change the brain’s capacity to perceive, store, and apply information, grit and growth mindset converge into a single, practical orientation: the learning mindset. This mindset centers on measurable cognitive growth and the confidence that arises from seeing one’s own progress.
There is applied research demonstrating that training cognitive processes can produce measurable gains that transfer to academic performance. For example, studies on working memory training and research with students who have learning disabilities show improvements in cognitive abilities and in classroom outcomes. Those findings help make grit and growth mindset less abstract: students who experience real cognitive gains begin to believe that effort plus strategy leads to improvement, and that belief motivates further effort.
Practical classroom impact is best illustrated by a simple story. After completing twelve weeks of cognitive training and seeing average gains on the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT), a group of students tackled a difficult problem together. When one student voiced discouragement—“I don’t think we can figure this out”—another replied, “Remember how we struggled in BrainWare and then finally got it? I think we can do this.” They persisted, tried different approaches, and solved the problem. That moment of shared recall—recognizing prior cognitive growth—shifted their response to challenge.
The heart of growth mindset and grit is this: when students witness their own cognitive development, they gain the confidence to take on progressively harder tasks. They learn to rebound from failure, apply new strategies, and maintain curiosity. In short, confidence fuels curiosity, and curiosity drives further learning. Educators can support this cycle by providing experiences that develop cognitive skills, teaching students to reflect on their progress, and guiding them to combine effort with adaptive strategies.
About the Author
Betsy Hill is President of BrainWare Learning Company, a provider of cognitive literacy solutions. An experienced educator, she has studied the connections between neuroscience and education with experts including Dr. Patricia Wolfe, author of Brain Matters. Betsy has taught high school foreign languages and currently teaches strategic thinking in the MBA program at Lake Forest Graduate School of Management. She holds a Master of Arts in Teaching and an MBA from Northwestern University and is a former chair of the board of trustees at Chicago State University.
This article was originally published by The Learning Counsel, a research institute and news media hub focused on the shift in education toward digital curriculum.