Elementary Teachers’ Mindset Relate to Their Responses to Student’s Successes and Failures (Poster 12)

• In Event: Friday Poster Session 4:55
  In Invited Poster Session: 2024 AERA Undergraduate Fellows Research Poster Fair

Abstract

How adults frame children’s achievement, such as focusing on ability (a person response) versus
due to effort (a process response) can potentially undermine math motivation. However, what
psychological processes lead teachers to use person (ability) or process (effort) responses is
unclear. I investigated the relation between elementary math teachers’ math anxiety, their growth
mindset, and their responses to successes and failures with students, to understand why teachers
might give responses that support or undermine student motivation.
Elementary (N = 175) school teachers completed a survey describing their beliefs about math
and teaching practices. Participants were predominantly white and female, with teaching
experience ranging from one to thirty-five years. Participants reported on their growth mindset
(the belief that students’ ability can change), their feelings of math anxiety, and how frequently
they gave person and process messages to successes and failures.
Math anxiety scores were relatively high (M = 4.86) but unrelated to any responses. Teachers
reported giving process responses to success (M = 4.32) and failure (M = 3.89) more frequently
than person responses to success (M = 2.16) and failure (M = 1.46). Teachers with more of a
growth mindset were less likely to provide person responses to success and less likely to provide
person responses to failure. Potential reasons include that person responses align more with a
fixed mindset on how a student understands math. Even though math anxiety wasn’t related to
responses, it was quite high, which could relate to other teacher practices.
Investigating if math anxiety influences other facets of teaching, whether or not a manipulation
of the sample pool alters the results, or if other methods of research sampling (such as
observation) would give a more accurate representation of the teachers’ mindsets and their
responses are a few alternative methods for future research.

Author

• Jordan Rineer, University of Georgia