Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, along with other education researchers interested in growth mindset, have done numerous studies showing that when students believe their intelligence can grow and change with effort, they perform better on academic tests. These findings have sparked interest and debate about how to encourage a growth mindset in students both at home and at school.
Now, a national study of tenth-graders in Chile found student mindsets are correlated to achievement on language and math tests. And students from low-income families were less likely to hold a growth mindset than their more affluent peers. However, if a low-income student did have a growth mindset, it worked as a buffer against the negative effects of poverty on achievement.
“This is not a sample; this is everyone in school,” said Susana Claro, a doctoral candidate at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education and lead author of the article “Growth Mindset Tempers the Effects of Poverty on Academic Achievement,” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Claro, along with Stanford scholars David Paunesku and Carol Dweck, wanted to know if at a very large-scale (168,000 students) growth mindset would correlate with academic performance. They found that it did at almost every school in Chile, a correlation stronger than they expected to find.
Claro acknowledged that whether students achieve academically or not is a result of a complicated mix of factors that include poverty, trauma and motivation, among other factors. But she believes that these growth mindset findings indicate that, at the very least, focusing on building growth mindsets in students should be part of the conversation.
To read Katrina Schwartz' article, please click here.
Comments (0)