Maintaining Educational Inequality: Fixed Mindsets and System Legitimization

• In Event: Civic Engagement and Corridors of Struggle and Meaning Across Domains

Abstract

The present research examines how individuals’ growth and fixed mindsets (i.e., beliefs about the malleability of intelligence) relate to their likelihood of legitimizing unequal educational systems. Meta-analyses of 20 original studies, including K-12 teachers and staff (k = 8; N ≈ 2,001), college students (k = 7; N ≈ 2,725), and American adults (k = 5; N ≈ 1,792) demonstrated that the belief that intelligence is a stable, fixed characteristic (i.e., a fixed mindset) consistently predicted greater likelihood of legitimizing educational inequality via four different measures of legitimization. Results suggest that fixed mindsets are likely to undermine efforts to change unequal educational systems, and one pathway toward educational equity involves attending to prevailing beliefs about intelligence.

Authors

• Laura Brady, American Institutes for Research

• Arianne Eason, University of California - Berkeley

• Stephanie Fryberg, University of Michigan