Praise Process Over Results

“Great job! You’re so smart!” How often have we heard (or said) these words when a child just completed a learning task? Despite the best of intentions, this kind of praise can actually deter future efforts to learn depending on their mindset (see previous post). For many students, hearing comments about their intelligence (even positive ones) end up encouraging a fixed mindset where they believe their abilities are determined at birth and are unchangeable, even with effort and support. That student that just heard they’re “so smart” after succeeding on a task, starts to learn that they’re “not smart” when they don’t complete a task. From a fixed mindset, that failure means that the task is beyond their innate ability.

So what do you do? Not give praise? Definitely not. Children absolutely need to hear how excited others are about the progress they’ve made. Instead of focusing on the successful completion of the activity, however, focus your praise on the process, skills and efforts they put in to try and complete the task. Notice, you can give this process praise whether they succeed at the task or fail and so encourage them to continue trying and using those processes in future.

Imagine a teenager who just took a multiple-choice practice driving test and passed. They turn away from the computer and exclaim: “Look! I passed and I didn’t even study! I just guessed most of the answers!” Is there any value in praising the fact that they passed? Or is it better to redirect their attention to the processes that will help them succeed more consistently: “Wow! That’s lucky! Do you think you can do that again the next couple of times? Do you remember which questions you guessed on? Maybe we can work on understanding why those answers are correct so you can get those points next time as well?”

Imagine a child working on their math homework. They read the question, think about it, reread the question, circle keywords, review the notes from class, and then they try to answer. Do you want to encourage them getting the answer right or do you want to encourage the 4 steps that came before, and that are generalizable to other questions?