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Students’ view of intelligence (i.e., their mindset beliefs) has been found to be related to their self-efficacy and goal orientations as well as to influence their course outcomes. Comparisons of students’ chemistry mindset between different groups found that organic chemistry I students held more of a growth mindset than general chemistry I students at the beginning of a term. Additionally, men tended to hold more growth mindset beliefs than women. Given these differences, structural equation modeling was used to explore the relations between students’ mindset, self-efficacy, and goal orientations, along with their relation to achievement outcomes within a course. An indirect effect of mindset on summative achievement was found to be mediated through performance-avoidance goals, whereas the relation between self-efficacy and summative achievement was mediated through performance-approach, mastery-avoidance, and performance-avoidance goal orientations. While mindset was not found to be directly or indirectly related to formative achievement outcomes, self-efficacy was found to have an indirect effect on formative achievement through mastery-approach and mastery-avoidance goal orientations. Additionally, an interaction between mindset and self-efficacy was found to be related to performance-avoidance goals, as has been suggested in prior studies. These results point to the importance of mindset on achievement outcomes while also considering influences from self-efficacy and goal orientations. Future work is encouraged to investigate how these variables are related when they are measured throughout a term. 

Mindset is a construct of interest for challenging learning environments, as science courses often are, in that, it has implications for behavioral responses to academic challenges. Previous work examining mindset in science learning contexts has been primarily quantitative in nature, limiting the theoretical basis for mindset perspectives specific to science domains. A few studies in physics education research have revealed domain-specific complexities applying to the mindset construct that suggest a need to explore undergraduate perspectives on mindset within each science domain. Here we present a multiple case study examining chemistry-specific mindset beliefs of students enrolled in general and organic chemistry lecture courses. A between-case analysis is used to describe six unique perspectives on chemistry mindset beliefs. This analysis revealed that students’ beliefs about their own ability to improve in chemistry intelligence or regarding chemistry-specific cognitive abilities did not consistently match their views on the potential for change for other students in chemistry. The nature of the abilities themselves (whether they were naturally occurring or developed with effort), and the presence of a natural inclination toward chemistry learning were observed to play a role in students’ perspectives. The findings from this analysis are used to propose a more complex model for chemistry-specific mindset beliefs to inform future work. 

Chemistry education research has increasingly considered the role of affect when investigating chemistry learning environments over the past decade. Despite its popularity in educational spheres, mindset has been understudied from a chemistry-specific perspective. Mindset encompasses one's beliefs about the ability to change intelligence with effort and has been shown to be a domain-specific construct. For this reason, students’ mindset would be most relevant in chemistry if it were measured as a chemistry-specific construct. To date, no instrument has been developed for use in chemistry learning contexts. Here we present evidence supporting the development process and final product of a mindset instrument designed specifically for undergraduate chemistry students. The Chemistry Mindset Instrument (CheMI) was developed through an iterative design process requiring multiple implementations and revisions. We analyze the psychometric properties of CheMI data from a sample of introductory (general and organic) chemistry students enrolled in lecture courses. We achieved good data-model fit via confirmatory factor analysis and high reliability for the newly developed items, indicating that the instrument functions well with the target population. Significant correlations were observed for chemistry mindset with students’ self-efficacy, mastery goals, and course performance, providing external validity evidence for the construct measurement.