According to this month’s Scientific American, the best way to produce high-achievers in school is to help kids appreciate the value of the process rather than just the outcome (something that the author calls a “growth mind-set”).
From the article’s summary:
“Teaching people to have a ‘growth mind-set,’ which encourages a focus on ‘process’ rather than on intelligence or talent, produces high-achievers in school and in life. Parents and teachers can engender a growth mind-set in children by praising them for their persistence or strategies (rather than for their intelligence), by telling success stories that emphasize hard work and love of learning, and by teaching them about the brain as a learning machine.”
Don’t miss the end of the article, which shares some excellent examples for parents on how to praise “…effort, strategies, focus, persistence in the face of difficulty, and willingness to take on challenge.”
Here’s a past post of mine on praising efforts over outcomes, and another with some similar advice from Dan Pink.