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Abstract Mounting evidence that growth mindset—the belief that intelligence is not fixed and can be developed—improves educational outcomes has spurred additional interest in how to measure and promote it in other contexts. Most of this research, however, focuses on high‐income countries, where the most common protocols for measuring and intervening on student mindsets rely on connected devices—often unavailable in low‐ and middle‐income countries' schools. This paper develops a toolkit to measure student mindsets in resource‐constrained settings, specifically in the context of Brazilian secondary public schools. Concretely, we convert the computer‐based survey instruments into text messages (SMS). Collecting mindset survey data from 3570 students in São Paulo State as schools gradually reopened in early 2021, we validate our methodology by matching key patterns in our data to previous findings in the literature. We also train a machine learning model on our data and show that it can (1) accurately classify students' SMS responses, (2) accurately classify student mindsets even based on text written in other media, and (3) rate the fidelity of different interventions to the published growth mindset curricula.
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Why Does a Growth Mindset Intervention Impact Achievement Differently across Secondary Schools? Unpacking the Causal Mediation Mechanism from a National Multisite Randomized Experiment
The growth mindset or the belief that intelligence is malleable has garnered significant attention for its positive association with academic success. Several recent randomized trials, including the National Study of Learning Mindsets (NSLM), have been conducted to understand why, for whom, and under what contexts a growth mindset intervention can promote beneficial achievement outcomes during critical educational transitions. Prior research suggests that the NSLM intervention was particularly effective in improving low-achieving 9th graders’ GPA, while the impact varied across schools. In this study, we investigated the underlying causal mediation mechanism that might explain this impact and how the mechanism varied across different types of schools. By extending a recently developed weighting method for multisite causal mediation analysis, the analysis enhances the external and internal validity of the results. We found that challenge-seeking behavior played a significant mediating role, only in medium-achieving schools, which may partly explain the reason why the intervention worked differently across schools. We conclude by discussing implications for designing interventions that not only promote students’ growth mindsets but also foster supportive learning environments under different school contexts.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1761179
- PAR ID:
- 10376808
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of research on educational effectiveness
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 1934-5739
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 617-644
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1080/19345747.2021.1894520
