Promoting Growth Mindset among Girls in STEM

• In Event: Case studies of policies, programs, and interventions toward improving girls' education and women's higher education

Proposal

Short Description of the project:
Since September 2018, Plan International China started to work on STEM education in rural school with particular attention to promoting STEM among girls due to the existing gender gap in STEM fields. Though evidence have shown that there is no significant difference in intelligence between the two sexes (Kersey, et al, 2019, science of learning), rural girls in China still face challenges in participating into STEM studies due to sociocultural factors. For instance, when girls struggle and fail in STEM subjects justification are usually associate to stereotypes (e.g., women are not good at math learning as men are). General tendency is to blame the lack of ability as typical to their gender, which in turn increase the decline in learning motivation, interest, self-confidence, etc. Moreover, these negative judgment associated to their gender further turn away girls from STEM widening the gender gap, and creating a vicious circle.

In order to address this problem, Plan International China in partnership with psychology experts from the Beijing Normal University (hereinafter referred to as the research team) carried out an applied research in 6 primary schools in 2 counties, Shaanxi Province in Northwestern China, during the autumn term 2020 on growth mindset enhancement in girls’ STEM interventions, including: (1) develop a growth mindset curriculum based on girls’ STEM courses; (2) provide growth mindset training for STEM teachers; (3) conduct an online, one-session growth mindset intervention; (4) offer supervision and feedback to teachers’ on their approaches and attitudes towards girls; and (5) make a plan for integrating growth mindset in learning environments. The research showed that the intervention boosted rural girls learning motivation and academic performance in STEM subjects through increasing their growth mindset in a comprehensive and in-depth way. The research findings suggest the opportunity to apply the same methodology to other STEM initiative to increase the number of girls benefiting by it.

• How is the topic relevant to CIES 2023?
Promoting Growth Mindset among Girls in STEM, by Plan International China has clearly shown high potential in promoting girls’ participation and outcomes in STEM subjects contributing to reduce the existing gender GAP. The proposed topic is therefore extremely relevant to the 2023 conference theme focusing on Improving Education for a More Equitable World.

• What is the need or the problem that the program or intervention tries to address?
According to the Gender Gap Report released by the World Economic Forum in 2020, although the overall gender gap in accessing education and employment has decreased, the gender divide in STEM areas is still widespread. However, this gap is not irreversible. A large number of educational intervention studies focusing on female's STEM performance have found that if effective intervention methods are adopted to support the positive development of girls and young women female and to promote a gender equal environment, female's learning potential could be effectively increased.
In line with this Plan International initiative had shown the great potential of applying a growth mindset approach to girls’ STEM initiatives, improving growth mindset, learning motivation, self-esteem, and academic performance among target girls. This approach has also supported STEM teachers to foster a growth mindset in their teaching, creating a growth mindset learning environment in STEM courses, and ultimately promoting the positive development of girls.

• What advice do you offer or seek at CIES, and how can it address similar challenges elsewhere?
We would like to let educators know that growth mindset could play an essential role in addressing the gender gap in STEM education, especially for marginalized girls living in areas with limited educational resources. At the same time, we would like to hear from the other participants on how we could move forward in further socializing this very promising approach.

• What would you have done differently, knowing what you know now about the project or program?
There is still much more to learn about student peers, other teachers, parents and school factors that can help sustain growth-mindset effects over time. We would have expanded the scope of research on intervention of mindset development for educators, parents, and children in rural areas, to help rural girls conquer challenges in STEM learning in a better way.

• What was the impact of the project on the problem it targeted? How was the project’s impact
assessed?
The research team applied randomized controlled trial to test the effectiveness of this growth mindset intervention. The results including: (1) the girls improved their growth mindset significantly. (2) The girls improved significantly their positive perception of failure as a way of learning. (3) The girls’ self-esteem, self-control and academic help-seeking improved significantly. In order to gain insights into the contribution of the growth mindset intervention on academic performance, the research team analyzed girls' academic performance based on students' monthly test (as pre-test) and midterm (as post-test) scores. It was observed that for those girls who did poorly in the pre-test, they got a significant improvement in math test score, Chinese test score, and the overall test score (a sum of Chinese, math, and English test scores) after the intervention (post-test).
Based on the results of growth mindset related variables, academic performance, and interview, we can conclude that the effects of our growth mindset intervention is very promising. The intervention helped girls improving learning motivation and academic performance through increasing their growth mindset in a comprehensive and in-depth way.

Authors

• honglian yu, Plan International China

• XIAONA XUE, Plan International China