Best Practice

Five steps to the confident mindset

Skills
Developing students’ confidence and self-esteem goes hand-in-hand with developing their positive mindset for learning. Ross McWilliam discusses some approaches that might be taken with younger students

In very simple terms, it could be said that self-esteem is belief in oneself.

When this is securely in place, there is an opportunity to develop confidence. This could be described as not being scared. In a school context this “not being scared” could be putting a hand up to ask a question, volunteering for an assignment or even taking part in physical education activities. Self-esteem and confidence form a key part of the social and emotional needs of all children.

In fact, a confident mindset could be the ideal foundation upon which to base the growth mindset and access academic development. If we take this a step further, Sklad et al (2012) and Durlak et al (2011) suggest that there is evidence demonstrating the link between social and emotional education programmes and academic attainment, showing that this type of learning actually improves academic performance.

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