Changing Students’ Beliefs About Learning Can Unveil Their Potential

Abstract

Too often, students fall short of their potential. Although structural and cognitive factors can contribute to this underperformance, how students subjectively construe themselves and their educational contexts can also play significant roles. Social-psychological interventions can increase student motivation, resilience, and achievement by altering these construals. To provide general recommendations for their implementation, we focus on interventions that address common student concerns, which stem from maladaptive beliefs that (a) intelligence cannot be improved; (b) some academic topics are uninteresting and personally irrelevant; (c) learning is an unplanned, passive activity; and (d) others think that “people like me” do not have the potential for success. These interventions tend to be relatively brief, easily implemented, highly scalable, and low in cost, time, and labor. Through a partnership of psychological scientists and practitioners, these carefully contextualized, theory-driven interventions can help students achieve their potential.