This study suggests psychological interventions that support a growth mindset can benefit poorer pupils’ academic performance. It may be of interest to policy makers and educators looking for evidence-based innovations.
Mind-set interventions are a scalable treatment for academic underachievement
Synopsis
Testing the effectiveness of academic-mindset interventions, the authors begin by stating that positive results have been found by small-scale, proof-of-concept interventions, delivered in person in one school at a time. They set out to test whether this approach could be a practical way to raise school achievement on a large scale.
The study involved delivering brief growth-mindset and sense-of-purpose interventions through online modules to 1,594 pupils in 13 geographically diverse high schools in the USA. Both interventions were intended to help pupils persist when they experienced academic difficulty.
The authors found that among pupils at risk of dropping out of high school (one third of the sample), each intervention raised the pupils’ semester grade point averages in core academic courses and increased the rate at which pupils performed satisfactorily in core courses by 6.4%. They conclude by discussing implications from theory to practice and for education reform.