Poster #72 - Children’s Stable Explanations of Success and Failure as Precursors to Fixed Mindsets about Math Ability

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - Education, Schooling

Integrative Statement

Background: Many children and adults believe that not everyone can be good at math (e.g., Dweck, 2008; Kloosterman & Cougan, 1994; Leslie, Cimpian, et al., 2015). Such a fixed mindset can be detrimental to achievement (e.g., Paunesku et al., 2015). However, how young children develop a fixed mindset about math remains unclear. One way that children’s fixed mindsets may solidify is through repeated interpretations of performance in school, which over time coalesce to form abstract theories about math ability. Children have different experiences with success and failure in elementary school. Therefore, children’s explanations for success and failure in math could differentially affect the development of later fixed mindsets. The current project investigated whether young children’s interpretation of math success (e.g., “Smart kids will always be smart”), failure (e.g., “Kids who fail will never get better”), or both serve as precursors of a fixed mindset. In other words, we tested whether children who tend to explain success or failure performance as stable develop a more fixed mindset about math ability.
Method: Participants were 175 children in first- or second-grade. Experimenters followed identical procedures during two lab visits spaced 3-6 months apart (retention = 95%). Dweck’s (1999) fixed mindset measure was adapted for children (four items, α= .59-.65). The experimenter then told participants about two hypothetical children: one who did very well and one who did very poorly on a math test. Participants 1) explained why the child succeeded or failed, 2) predicted how the child would do on another test, and 3) explained their prediction. Each response was coded as reflecting a stable or unstable view of math performance (κ’s > .7, see Table 1). Researchers also asked children if they agreed with two other possible stable explanations. We created two composite score for children’s explanations of success and failure performances as stable by combining the number of stable responses for the open-ended codes and researcher-produced items.
Results: At both visits, children gave more stable explanations for success than failure (see Table 2). The composite scores for stable performance explanations declined over time for success (t(165) = 2.95, p = .004) and failure (t(165) = 3.27, p = .001). Children’s scores across the two visits were consistent for success (r = .43, p < .001) and failure (r = .44, p < .001). Children who provided more stable explanations of success at the first visit were more likely to hold fixed mindsets at the second visit (β = .16, p = .025) even when controlling for earlier fixed mindset (β = .47, p < .001); the effect was smaller for stable failure scores (β = .11, p = .12).
Discussion: The findings shed light on how children think about math performance and beginning components of a fixed mindset towards math ability. Specifically, children are more likely to see successful performances in math as stable. Longitudinal data suggests that children’s understanding of success could be worth targeting to curtail the development of burgeoning beliefs about the fixedness of math ability.

Authors

• Michael M. Barger, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Presenting Author

• Bridget Finis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Non-Presenting Author

• Dajung Oh, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Non-Presenting Author

• Samantha Shah, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Non-Presenting Author

• Andrei Cimpian, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Eva Pomerantz, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Non-Presenting Author