Hello, my name is Emilia Gonzalez. I am a Knowledge & Evaluation Doctoral Research Assistant with the International and Canadian Children’s Rights Partnership and a PhD student at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Over the past ten years, I have been working with young people to better understand and address complex social issues that affect their lives. My work often requires collaboration, innovation and risk-taking. Undoubtedly, when we try new things out, we don’t always know whether they will work out!
When we ‘fail’ at something, it can feel scary and uncomfortable. A growth mindset approach, developed by Dr. Dweck, sees experimentation and ‘failure’ as opportunities for learning. Adopting a growth mindset can support young people to feel less pressure to meet unrealistic standards and turn mistakes into stepping stones in a learning process.
Mistakes can also offer new perspectives and source our creativity. In her podcast Secret Feminist Agenda, Dr. McGreggor reminds us that ‘failure’ often presents us with different ways of seeing the world that we could have easily missed otherwise. Creativity flourishes where mistakes are celebrated rather than feared and where process is valued over outcomes.
A growth mindset approach is also crucial to building evaluation processes that truly welcome multiple perspectives and ways of addressing social issues. It challenges the idea of one “right answer” and of a linear evaluation process. A growth mindset recognizes that setbacks and cycles are a natural part of learning. It has benefits for working with young people with diverse lived experiences and ways of thinking because it invites creative and critical thinking, centers young people’s strengths and challenges existing power dynamics.
Hot Tips
For evaluation processes with young (and not so young) people:
- Create supportive and brave spaces where young people feel encouraged to take risks and make mistakes without fear of judgment.
- Provide constructive feedback that focuses on effort and learning rather than achievement to reinforce the idea that growth is achievable and that process is more important than outcomes.
- Embed reflective practices into the evaluation process so that young people can reflect on their experiences, learn from moments where things didn’t go as planned and acknowledge the many ways perfectionism and fear of failure shows up along the way.
- Recognize that young people’s diverse experiences and existing systemic barriers can shape the way they interact with these concepts. Building relationships and flexibility within evaluation processes can support marginalized young people to embrace imperfection and participate meaningfully.
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