Profiles of Teachers' Math Mind-Sets and Implications for Motivation

• In Event: Investigating Academic Mind-Sets in New Contexts and With Novel Conceptual Approaches

Abstract

Growth mindset, the belief that ability can change, is not only beneficial for students, but also for students’ teachers to believe (Canning et al., 2018; Heyder et al., 2020). As growth mindset enters the popular lexicon, many teachers report familiarity with a growth mindset (Yettick et al., 2017; Patrick & Joshi, 2019), and yet, their practices seem to suggest that they do not enact a growth mindset in their teaching (Sun, 2018a; Cutler et al., 2019). This may be particularly true in the domain of math, in which teachers might be more likely to think that only a few students can succeed (Boaler, 2015; Sun, 2018b). The disconnect between reported beliefs and practice could be due to teachers who hold a “false growth mindset,” or a shallow agreement that math ability can change without teaching accordingly (Dweck, 2015). In two studies, we used two novel measures to broaden our understanding of the mindsets that future and current teachers hold and the implications for teacher’s mathematics motivation, which may ultimately impact their teaching.

Undergraduates in a college of education (N = 133) and elementary school teachers (N = 114) completed surveys analyzing their math ability mindsets and two novel measures of mindset. The first asked participants what percentage of math ability was due to effort vs. natural ability on a 0-100 scale. The second measure used vignettes about children who performed differently on a math ability test and asked the participant to predict the range of scores each child could get in the future. The ranges of each scenario were averaged to produce a “math ability flexibility” score. In the undergraduate study, participants completed items related to their motivation towards mathematics. In the teacher study, participants completed questions about their math competence, anxiety, and beliefs about whether math was something only a few people could do well.

We conducted profile-centered analyses using the traditional and two novel mindset measures to reveal four consistent profiles across the two studies (see Figure 1). One group held clearly fixed mindset beliefs, and two held growth mindset beliefs, with an emphasis on either the role of effort or ability flexibility. One group, which we labelled false growth mindset appeared to agree with growth mindset, but thought ability was more natural and less flexible than the other two growth mindset groups. Mindset groups differed in their motivation, beliefs, and anxiety towards mathematics (see Table 1). In general, those with a false growth mindset were more like the fixed mindset in their motivation than to the growth mindset groups.

We found that many future and current teachers agree with traditional math growth mindset items. However, many simultaneously exhibited fixed mindset beliefs on novel measures. This false growth mindset was just as associated with poor motivation and math anxiety as fixed mindset. Given that teachers play a large role in shaping students’ math motivation and achievement, mindset researchers need to address false growth mindset in teachers by expanding how they assess mindsets and conduct intervention work.

Authors

• Michael M. Barger, University of Georgia - Athens

• Amanda Elizabeth Ferster, University of Georgia - Athens