A Teacher-Facing Values-Alignment Intervention Reduces Inequality in Educational Outcomes (Poster 31)

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Two
  In Poster Session: Motivational Beliefs in Context

Abstract

We designed a novel intervention that motivated teachers to regularly communicate support for students’ “growth mindsets” (their belief that any student can improve with sufficient effort and support). The intervention framed these communication practices as a way to achieve a central value of most teachers: inspiring students’ enthusiastic engagement with learning. We randomly assigned 155 high-school teachers (with 5,393 students) to receive this intervention and 164 teachers (with 6,167 students) to a control condition. The intervention successfully promoted teachers’ adoption of the suggested practices, overcoming major barriers to teacher behavior change that other scalable approaches have failed to surmount. The intervention also improved academic achievement in socioeconomically-disadvantaged classrooms, reducing inequality in educational outcomes.

Authors

• Cameron Hecht, University of Texas at Austin
  Presenting Author

• Christopher Bryan, University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author

• David Yeager, University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author