Influences of Relationships and Agency on Academic Mind-Sets in a National High School Sample

• In Event: Creating a Culture of Care: The Importance of Student-Teacher Relationships

Abstract

Objective
This study explores the extent to which young people’s self-beliefs about themselves as learners (i.e. academic mindsets) are shaped by their relationships with adults and peers, and by their sense of agency within their school environments.

Background
A young person’s beliefs about themselves, their schools, and themselves in relation to their schools (i.e. academic mindsets), play a pivotal role in promoting positive academic achievement (Farrington et al., 2012; Cohen, Walton, & Dweck, 2014). Specifically, when students experience a sense of belonging, self-efficacy, growth mindset, and meaningful learning, they have improved academic outcomes across a range of indicators (Goodenow, 1993; Hulleman & Harackiewicz, 2009; Walton & Cohen, 2007). These improved academic outcomes often remain years into the future (Paunesku et al., 2015), with the largest gains seen in previously low performing students and students of color, who may be vulnerable to negative academic mindsets due to experiences of marginalization and exclusion within academic environments (Steele, 1997).

While interventions are one way to improve individual mindsets, young people build their beliefs about themselves in relation to their school environments continuously, through their relationships with others as well as their level of agency within those environments (Yeager & Walton, 2011). To date, there has been no literature investigating the extent to which young people’s school based relationships with adults and peers contribute to their academic mindsets, and whether that relationship is explained by their sense of agency within school. As a result, this study investigates the way natural recursive developmental processes (i.e. relationships with adults and peers, experiences of agency), may contribute to academic mindsets.

Method
Data for this project come from a nationally representative survey of young people (N=3,300). Higher order confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to identify the ways belonging, self-efficacy, meaningful learning, and growth mindset constructs cohere around the superordinate construct of academic mindset. Next, path models were conducted predicting direct effects of relationships with adults and peers, and indirect effects of agency on academic mindsets. Finally, models were tested for multiple group moderation across dimensions of gender, grade, and race.

Findings
Preliminary findings suggest that a sense of belonging, self-efficacy, and meaningful learning all loaded onto a higher order factor of academic mindset, but growth mindset did not, suggesting that growth mindset may be experienced as distinct from the three other self-beliefs. Relationships with adults and peers significantly predicted academic mindset, and a significant indirect effect was found to account for variation in the relationship between adult and peer relationships and academic mindset. Multiple group invariance testing is in the process of being conducted.

Significance
As educational reform increasingly shifts to a whole child understanding of learning and development, schools are centering relationships and inquiry driven pedagogical approaches as pathways towards deeper learning. Understanding the ways in which those experiences drive young people’s self-concept allows for increased knowledge of why relational, student centered approaches to teaching and learning may improve learning outcomes.

Author

• Max Margolius, Boston University