Teachers’ support for growth mindset and its links with students’ growth mindset, academic engagement, and achievements in lower secondary school

Abstract

Academic engagement has been shown to deteriorate in lower secondary school, and it is necessary to find ways to prevent this so that students’ engagement and achievements do not decline irrevocably. Teacher support for growth mindset (TSGM) is likely to influence students’ mindsets while also promoting academic engagement and achievement. This cross-sectional study first examined the extent to which lower secondary school students (N = 1608) perceived their teachers’ classroom pedagogy as supportive of their growth mindset and students’ growth mindset beliefs. The study’s main purpose was to test a latent structural equation model specifying that perceived TSGM is directly related to students’ growth mindset, directly and indirectly related to academic engagement (behavioral and emotional), and indirectly related to academic achievement. Students’ perceived growth mindset and academic engagement thus served as intermediate variables. The results verified that TSGM was indeed related to growth mindset and academic engagement, the latter both directly and via students’ perceived growth mindset. Furthermore, TSGM was also related to academic achievement via students’ growth mindset and academic engagement. The results suggest that TSGM can facilitate students’ growth mindset and academic engagement and, thereby, achievement in lower secondary school, a period during which students may struggle with academic motivation.