Our primary goal was to shift the students' attitudes from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, thereby fostering an understanding of the importance of consistent study and effort in acquiring new knowledge and skills. The project had a three objectives: 1. Improving students' self-compassion When students fail, we'd like them to try again instead of underachieving. 2. Students are willing to put in effort 3. Students will understand the meaning of their own actions for well-being. Separating learning from self-esteem encourages trying and possibly failing when it comes to new tasks. This is necessary for all kinds of learning processes. Self-esteem that is based on compassion (shared humanity) is not destroyed by failure but encourages trying again until the goal is reached. Through a teamwork project, students will be motivated to work towards a common goal, which will increase the feeling of being capable on other school-related tasks as well. Students will learn different working skills (such as scheduling, getting started on time, asking for help etc.) from one another. Student will understand that the learning process is a journey with joy and more important than the outcome.
Espoon yhteislyseo offers regular upper secondary school courses according to the national curriculum, along with some elective school-specific courses particular to our upper secondary school. Examples of these in recent years have been Global Citizenship and the UN, History in English, a course combining psychology and Swedish and Escape Room course. We have now about 650 learners aged 15-19 and our school is still growing. Next autumn we will take 250 new student to our school. The Grade Point Average required to study at our school is at the lower end of the spectrum, which means that we have students with a broad range of academic abilities. The Student Body representatives have raised the issue of well-being as an important factor for learning. Finnish upper secondary school students report feeling more stressed than before and Covid-19 has aggravated the situation. Our student representatives and teachers felt that well-being is an issue that we can make a difference on. This project is based on C. Dweck's theory on the importance of attitude for learning. A growth mindset, being willing to work and use your full capacity, encourages persistently trying new things and looking for solutions, even in difficult tasks.