Mindsets and Math Task Difficulty Preference Among Finnish Elementary School Students

• In Event: Understanding Student Knowledge and Task Difficulty in Mathematics

Abstract

The aim of the current study was to explore general intelligence and math ability mindsets and their associations with preference of task level difficulty in the domain of mathematics. For this, 92 elementary school students’ mindsets were measured and their preference regarding task difficulty after working on a challenging math task recorded. Students preferring a challenging version of the subsequent math task had a significantly higher growth mindset regarding math ability when compared to the students preferring an easy task, while there were no differences regarding general intelligence mindset. These results refer to the importance of academic-domain-specificity of mindsets and how these beliefs actualize in daily subject-specific decisions.

Authors

• Ita Puusepp, University of Helsinki

• Tanja linnavalli, University of Helsinki

• Sonja Laine, University of Helsinki

• Elina Kuusisto, Tampere universities

• Kirsi A. Tirri, University of Helsinki