Towards a Growth Mindset Culture in the Classroom: Implementation of a Lesson-Integrated Mindset Training

Helene Zeeb,Alexander Renkl,Julia Ostertag

doi:10.1155/2020/8067619

Abstract

A mindset training aims to strengthen the belief that abilities are malleable (growth mindset), which has proven to be beneficial for learning. Teachers can support the effects of such a training by establishing a classroom culture in line with the growth mindset idea. Yet, previous training programs have mostly been detached from regular lessons. In this study, a physics teacher implemented a mindset training that consisted of explicit training sessions and implicit training phases. In these implicit phases, the teacher enriched ordinary lessons with growth mindset feedback. We investigated the overall effect of this lesson-integrated training on students’ beliefs and motivation. Students from two seventh-grade courses participated in the quasi-experimental study (N = 59). One course received the mindset training; the other course served as control. We measured growth mindsets about physics abilities, self-beliefs, and motivation before and after the training and six months later. The results indicate that there was a positive and stable training effect on growth mindsets, but no effect on self-beliefs. Regarding motivation, the training buffered the demotivation that occurred without training. We conclude that a mindset training is important when introducing a new and difficult school subject. Furthermore, we consider teachers’ involvement as a promising approach to optimize mindset interventions and to encourage a sustained change of instructional practices.

Highlights

Whether students want to learn depends on whether they believe that they can learn: those who believe that abilities improve with practice tend to show higher motivation than those who believe that abilities are unchangeable
While the effects of educational interventions are often strongest when researchers implement the training (e.g., [6]), the isolation from ordinary lessons may be problematic in the particular case of a mindset training. e reason is that instructional practices–for example, teachers’ feedback–influence students’ beliefs in a vigorous and permanent manner (e.g., [7]) and may influence whether growth mindsets take root in the classroom after a training
In addition to explicit training elements, the intervention included implicit elements within instructional practices. We investigated whether this integrated training fosters the development of growth mindsets, improves self-beliefs, and increases motivation for physics among the students. e study sets the base for further studies that compare integrated versus “traditional” nonintegrated interventions

Summary

Introduction

Whether students want to learn depends on whether they believe that they can learn: those who believe that abilities improve with practice (growth mindset) tend to show higher motivation than those who believe that abilities are unchangeable (fixed mindset [1]). In addition to explicit training elements, the intervention included implicit elements within instructional practices We investigated whether this integrated training fosters the development of growth mindsets, improves self-beliefs, and increases motivation for physics among the students. An option to take the influence of instructional practices and classroom norms on the success of a mindset intervention into account would be to empower teachers to provide the (explicit) training themselves They could be trained how to (implicitly) encourage growth mindsets when they teach. In contrast to previous studies, the mindset training contained classical explicit training elements, and implicit parts in which the teacher adopted the growth mindset idea into regular physics instruction We investigated whether this lesson-integrated mindset training would have an overall effect on students’ beliefs and motivation. For the students without training, we expected no change of their motivation (motivation hypothesis)

Methods

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Results