Poster #34 - Reading Between the Lines: Detecting Teachers’ Growth and Fixed Mindsets Through Implicit Means

• In Event: Poster Session 13

Abstract

Having a growth mindset (GM) – the view that effort and experience can lead to an increase in intelligence – has been shown to have profound effects on students’ success in school (e.g., Blackwell et al., 2007). Students with a GM tend to persist through challenges, to see challenges as opportunities for growth and learning, and to use a variety of approaches to learning (Dweck, 2007). This, in turn, leads to increased motivation and persistence in academic subjects like mathematics (Blackwell et al., 2007).
Recent research has indicated that students need a classroom context that fosters their GM beliefs and behavior to reap the benefits of a GM (Yeager et al., 2022). Teachers are aware of the importance of encouraging a GM in their students, but there is a disconnect between their self-reported GM and their teaching practices (Nestor, 2017; Sun, 2019).
Researchers who have identified the gap between teacher beliefs and practices have used gold-standard methods such as surveys, interviews and classroom observations (e.g., Sun, 2018; 2019). Our study sought to identify if this gap exists between teacher mindset survey responses and in comments on classroom interactions when they are not primed to think about mindset.
We recruited 71 4th-grade teachers from an online teacher professional development website, designed to support teacher learning around teaching elementary mathematics. Teachers watched 4 mathematics classroom video clips and were prompted to comment on each. Teachers were also asked to take a survey about their mindset beliefs.
Teachers’ responses to each of the 4 video clips were coded according to a rubric developed by the authors, based on recent research (Boylan et al., 2018; Miller-Cotto & Lewis, 2020; Mueller & Dweck, 1998; Murphy et al., 2021; O’Brien et al., 2015; Rissanen et al., 2019; Sun, 2019). We examined whether teachers provided Only Growth, Only Fixed, Both Growth and Fixed or Neither Growth nor Fixed Mindset comments in response to the video clips. In a preliminary analysis, we found that 42% of the teachers provided Only Growth Mindset comments; 12% provided Only Fixed; and 46% provided Both Growth and Fixed comments. We found that, on average, the participating teachers endorsed growth mindset on their survey responses (x̄ = 1.77, on a scale of 1-6; SD = .73). Finally, we addressed whether the teachers who produced Only Growth, Only Fixed, or Both Growth and Fixed comments differed in their growth mindset survey responses. We found no differences across groups.
Thus, we found evidence of the gap pointed to in the literature between teacher beliefs and classroom practices in spontaneous comments made about classroom interactions. This research extends previous research by potentially offering a more nuanced account of teachers’ mindset beliefs, by using both explicit (survey) and implicit (comments in response to classroom video clips) measures of teachers’ mindset beliefs. Examples of our rubric and teacher comments will be shared as well as suggestions for implications and future directions for research.

Authors

• Katy Curry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Presenting Author

• Meg Bates

• Cheryl G. Moran

• Joseph P. Robinson-Cimpian

• Hana Kearfott

• Shereen Beilstein

• Michelle Perry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign