Academic Growth Mind-Set and Structural Resources: Mind-Set Impacts in Low-Performing Urban High Schools

• In Event: How Context and Learning Mindsets Advance Academic Outcomes: Findings from National Study of Learning Mindsets

Abstract

Objectives:
Given the promise of academic mindsets for learning and the contextual variation in these effects discussed in other papers in this session, this paper sets out to answer the following research questions: What is the effect of a promising brief growth mindset intervention in low-performing urban high schools? And, what contextual factors moderate the reception and impacts of the mindset message?
Perspectives or theoretical framework:
We draw on both social-psychological perspectives related to motivation and academic mindsets as well as sociological perspectives related to structural resources for learning. We seek to bring these perspectives closer together through a careful empirical analysis of their intersection.
Methods:
The methodology is a randomized controlled trial of a brief growth mindset intervention in a sample of 2,037 9th grade students in five low-performing high schools in one large urban school district in the United States. Random assignment allows us to test the impact of the growth mindset intervention. Moreover, the intervention and procedures were the same as in the National Study of Learning Mindsets (NSLM), so effects within this sample can be compared to the overall results to provide insight into contexts where students face substantial barriers to academic success. We pre-registered confirmatory tests of intervention impacts and exploratory investigations of contextual moderation.
Data:
We collected survey and administrative data records to assess the impacts of the intervention on immediate academic mindsets and academic grades (GPA). In addition, these data provide pre-intervention information to test for contextual moderators of impacts within the sample, such as institutional social connections (self-reported trust of mathematics teacher), and curricular opportunities (mathematics track).
Results:
We find predicted effects of the intervention on growth mindset (d = 0.24), but no impact on GPA (d = 0.02). Thus, desired changes in mindset did not support improved academic performance in this context. Exploratory analyses find stronger take-up of the intervention message among students with higher teacher trust and limited evidence for more benefits for students in advanced mathematics courses.
Significance:
This paper is important because it focuses on mindsets in a specific and practically important context: low-performing schools in large urban school districts. The findings point to both the promise of promoting a growth mindset in such settings, but also its limits in the effort to improve academic outcomes. Specifically, results suggest that key contextual conditions enable the benefits of academic mindset, especially social connections to school and curricular opportunities to learn.

Authors

• David Yeager, The University of Texas at Austin

• Paul Hanselman, University of California - Irvine