Growth Culture: teams and schools

01

Before this course, and from mindset to culture

In simple words

A seed needs good soil. You can plant a strong seed, but if the soil is dry, it will not grow well. A growth mindset is the seed. The team or class is the soil.

Before this course: Applying Growth Mindset (course 9.9.2). You already know how to read effect sizes, how feedback can backfire, how to write wise feedback, how to pick a stretch challenge and how to test a habit honestly. Here we move from one person to a whole group: a team, a club or a class.

Key facts

Culture here means the shared beliefs and everyday habits of a group: what people expect, what gets rewarded and what happens after a mistake.
Peer norms mattered. In the US national study of a short online growth-mindset program (under one hour), grades changed for lower-achieving students when peer norms in the school matched the program's message (Yeager et al., 2019, Nature).
Teacher mindsets mattered. A follow-up analysis matched 9,167 student records with 223 maths teachers. It supported the "mindset-plus-supportive-context" idea: students' growth mindsets were more likely to show results when their teacher also held a growth mindset (Yeager et al., 2022, Psychological Science). The authors write that lasting effects "may require contextual supports".
What this means for you: teaching one person about mindset is not enough if the group around them punishes mistakes or praises only "natural talent".
Limit: these are studies of US high schools. Workplaces and other countries may differ.

Level	Example of a lever
Person	Their own beliefs and habits (courses 9.9 and 9.9.2)
Group	Peer norms: do classmates or teammates respect trying hard things?
Leader	What the teacher or manager believes, says and rewards
System	Grading rules, ranking, promotion and hiring

Step by step

Pick one group you belong to: a class, a team at work, a sports team or a club.
Draw the four levels from the table on a page.
For each level, write one thing that helps people try hard things.
For each level, write one thing that makes people hide mistakes.
Circle the level where you have the most influence.
Check: you have written at least one helper and one blocker at each level.

LESSON 01Before this course, and from mindset to culture

LESSON 01 / ANIMATED LESSON / AI VOICE00:00 / 01:00

Voice

Read the video script

[Host] "A growth mindset is a seed. Your team or class is the soil."
[Text on screen: 9,167 students · 223 maths teachers] "In a large US analysis, students' growth mindsets were more likely to show results when their teacher also held a growth mindset."
[Screen: four stacked boxes: person, group, leader, system] "Culture works at four levels: the person, the group, the leader and the system."
[Host] "So in this course, we stop asking only 'what do you believe?' and start asking 'what does this place reward?'"

Try it now

Complete the four-level map for one group you belong to. Keep it; you will use it in the final project.

ClaudeStuck? Copy a ready-made prompt for Claude

Copy this, open Claude, paste it, and Claude will walk you through the lesson step by step.

For a grown-up: Claude is for adults (18+). Copy this, paste it into Claude, and use the answer to explain the lesson to your child.

I'm learning "Growth Culture: teams and schools" on The Future Market. Lesson 1: "Before this course, and from mindset to culture".

What the lesson teaches:
- Culture here means the shared beliefs and everyday habits of a group: what people expect, what gets rewarded and what happens after a mistake.
- Peer norms mattered. In the US national study of a short online growth-mindset program (under one hour), grades changed for lower-achieving students when peer norms in the school matched the program's message (Yeager et al., 2019, Nature).
- Teacher mindsets mattered. A follow-up analysis matched 9,167 student records with 223 maths teachers. It supported the "mindset-plus-supportive-context" idea: students' growth mindsets were more likely to show results when their teacher also held a growth mindset (Yeager et al., 2022, Psychological Science). The authors write that lasting effects "may require contextual supports".
- What this means for you: teaching one person about mindset is not enough if the group around them punishes mistakes or praises only "natural talent".
- Limit: these are studies of US high schools. Workplaces and other countries may differ.
- Level - Example of a lever
- Person - Their own beliefs and habits (courses 9.9 and 9.9.2)

The exercise I'm working on:
Complete the four-level map for one group you belong to. Keep it; you will use it in the final project.

I'm stuck. Please:
1. Explain the main idea in plain, simple words with one everyday example.
2. Walk me through the exercise one small step at a time. Ask me what I've done so far before giving the next step.
3. Don't just give me the final answer. Help me do it myself, and check my work when I share it.

I'm a parent helping my child (about 8 years old) with a lesson called "Before this course, and from mindset to culture" from the course "Growth Culture: teams and schools".

Here's what the lesson says:
A seed needs good soil. You can plant a strong seed, but if the soil is dry, it will not grow well. A growth mindset is the seed. The team or class is the soil.

The activity:
Complete the four-level map for one group you belong to. Keep it; you will use it in the final project.

Please explain this so an 8-year-old understands: short sentences, a fun everyday example, and no hard words.
Then give me 3 simple questions I can ask my child to check they understood, and a way to do the activity together, one tiny step at a time.

Open Claude

Sources

Yeager et al. (2019), "A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement," Nature: doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1466-y
Yeager et al. (2022), "Teacher mindsets help explain where a growth-mindset intervention does and doesn't work," Psychological Science: doi.org/10.1177/09567976211028984

My notes

I learned this

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