Abstract
A global priority for the behavioural sciences is to develop cost-effective, scalable interventions that could improve the academic outcomes of adolescents at a population level, but no such interventions have so far been evaluated in a population-generalizable sample. Here we show that a short (less than one hour), online growth mindset intervention—which teaches that intellectual abilities can be developed—improved grades among lower-achieving students and increased overall enrolment to advanced mathematics courses in a nationally representative sample of students in secondary education in the United States. Notably, the study identified school contexts that sustained the effects of the growth mindset intervention: the intervention changed grades when peer norms aligned with the messages of the intervention. Confidence in the conclusions of this study comes from independent data collection and processing, pre-registration of analyses, and corroboration of results by a blinded Bayesian analysis.
Highlights
A global priority for the behavioural sciences is to develop cost-effective, scalable interventions that could improve the academic outcomes of adolescents at a population level, but no such interventions have so far been evaluated in a population-generalizable sample
We found that the growth mindset intervention increased the likelihood of students taking advanced mathematics in tenth grade by 3 percentage points (95% confidence interval = 0.01, 0.04), s.e. = 0.01, n = 6,690, k = 41, t = 3.18, P = 0.001, from a rate of 33% in the control condition to a rate of 36% in the intervention condition, corresponding to a 9% relative increase
The intervention produced gains in the consequential outcome of advanced mathematics course-taking for students overall, which is meaningful because the rigor of mathematics courses taken in high school strongly predicts later educational attainment[8,9], and educational attainment is one of the leading predictors of longevity and health[38,42]
Summary
The National Study of Learning Mindsets showed that a low-cost treatment, delivered in less than an hour, attained a substantial proportion of the effects on grades of the most effective rigorously evaluated adolescent interventions of any cost or duration in the literature within the pre-registered group of lower-achieving students. The evidence about the kinds of schools where the growth mindset treatment effect on grades was sustained, and where it was not, has important implications for future interventions. We might have expected that the intervention would compensate for unsupportive school norms, and that students who already had supportive peer norms would not need the intervention as much. R. The effect of high school courses on earnings. The Toolbox Revisited: Paths to Degree Completion from High School through College (US Department of Education, 2006). S. et al Using design thinking to improve psychological interventions: the case of the growth mindset during the transition to high school. S. Implicit theories of intelligence predict achievement across an adolescent transition: a longitudinal study and an intervention. Strategies for interpreting and reporting intervention effects for subgroups. Interpreting Effect Sizes of Education Interventions https://scholar.
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