Poster #163 - A Purpose for Learning Mindset Intervention Differentially Impacts Highly Anxious Students

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Prevention and Interventions

Integrative Statement

The promise of one-time mindset interventions have captured the attention of researchers, policymakers, and educators as a “light-touch,” powerful approach to increasing students’ academic motivation (Broda et al., 2018; Yeager & Walton, 2011). The most commonly examined outcomes of mindset intervention efficacy are course grades, because grades are often strong predictors of educational attainment and positive adult outcomes (Farrington et al., 2012). However, the mechanisms of the frequently reported gains in GPA are still unknown. Some of the potential mechanisms of effective mindset interventions are a reduction in academic anxiety and/or an increase in academic task diligence. Mindset interventions that orient students to a sense of purpose for learning, including identifying their own authentic goals for learning (such as contributing to their community), may lower their frustration and anxiety and increase their motivation when faced with academically challenging situations. Additionally, mindset interventions may have differential effects for different populations. In the present study, we explore the influence of a one-time purpose for learning intervention on low-income, ethnic minority adolescents’ academic outcomes, task persistence, task-relevant anxiety, and feelings of belongingness. We examined the heterogeneity of effects by students’ pre-intervention grades, gender, race/ethnicity, and trait anxiety.
Participants were 447 adolescents who participated in the Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP) while enrolled in Head Start 10-11 years prior to this study. The majority of the students identified as Black (68%) and 25% identified as Hispanic/Latino. Students in the treatment condition described problems in their community or in the world and then engaged in self-reflective writing to describe how working hard in school could help them solve these problems. Students in the control condition reflected on the difference between middle school and high school. Immediately following the intervention, the College Knowledge task (Pressler & Masucci, 2015) was used to test students’ diligence on a boring (but useful) task that offered information about applying to college, while simultaneously giving students the option to quit and play games, with no negative consequences for doing so.
Treatment effects were tested using OLS with robust standard errors adjusted for Head Start site-level clustering. Models included controls for demographic and family characteristics, executive function, and cognitive skills. Overall treatment effects (see Table 1) were primarily null, with trend-level evidence of a small negative impact on self-reported grades the following school year (β = -.14, p = .09). Although the intervention had a negative impact on grades overall, highly anxious students in the treatment group had significantly higher math grades relative to their control-group assigned counterparts, while low-anxiety students in the treatment group fared worse academically than their control-group counterparts (β = .62, p < .001). Additionally, treated Black students demonstrated greater task diligence (as measured by playing any games in the College Knowledge task) than Black students in the control group, whereas Hispanic/Latino students in the treatment group played more games than those in the control group. This finding has important implications in understanding the mechanisms that underlie mindset interventions, and which populations might be ideal to target.

Authors

• Jill Gandhi, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Tyler Watts, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Cybele Raver, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author