Growth Mindsets Around the Globe

Source: Pixabay

Few concepts in contemporary education have been more influential than the growth mindset, first articulated in the early aughts by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck. Studies have found evidence that growth mindset interventions (GMIs), which instill into students the belief that intelligence, skills, and even personality traits are malleable, can improve academic resilience and performance. And like denim jeans, martinis, and Google, this northern California discovery has gone international. Researchers around the world are testing whether the effects of GMIs in the U.S. can be replicated with students in their own nation and culture.

This international trend is exciting for two reasons. First, psychology as a field has been criticized for making sweeping conclusions about human behavior without studying non-U.S. samples. Just as water boils at lower temperatures on a mountain than at the beach, interventions may be more or less effective outside of the U.S. Second, studying GMIs in other locales can tell us more about how and why these interventions work, creating a beneficial reciprocity between U.S. and international research.

Three recent studies suggest that GMIs may help non-U.S. students, but also reveal ways in which these interventions are context dependent. Factors such as a student’s educational track, prior mindset, earlier academic performance, and classroom structure all could play a part in whether and for whom a GMI has a positive impact.

Vekstinnstillinger i Norge

This study tested a GMI delivered to 254 first-year high school students in Rogaland County, Norway. High school in Norway differs from in the U.S. in that it is voluntary, students must apply to attend, and students are placed on an academic track leading to college or a vocational track leading to a job. Although acceptance is guaranteed, it may not be to a student’s first choice, and only 70% of students finish within 5 years.

Students completed two 45-minute online sessions based on learning modules used in U.S. research. In session 1, students learned about the malleability of the brain and applied that knowledge to give advice to a friend who was struggling in school. In session 2, growth mindsets were normed via quotes from scientists, celebrities, and peers, and a growth mindset was connected to a pro-social purpose for learning. The GMI benefited only students who held a fixed mindset to begin with, students on the vocational track, or students with lower GPAs. Among these groups, the intervention successfully imbued a growth mindset and increased students’ willingness to seek challenges in order to learn.

Növekedési gondolkodásmód Magyarországon

This next study takes us east to Hungary, a nation where (according to the World Value Survey) only 7% of the population believes that hard work pays off in the long run. Over the course of 5 weeks, randomly assigned 10th grade homeroom teachers taught about either growth mindsets or the bystander effect. The 26 students in the GMI group learned about the everyday applicability of a growth mindset and practiced seeing academic setbacks through this lens.

Three weeks after the end of the GMI, students taught about growth mindsets had increased academic motivation and stronger beliefs that both intelligence and personality are malleable. These effects vanished, however, by the end of the school year only two months later. Moreover, the intervention had no effects on intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, or GPA.

Many factors likely contributed to these results, including the small sample size and the timing. Most GMIs are delivered at pivotal academic moments, such as the transition into high school or the start of college, whereas this one occurred in the midst of high school. Additionally, most students who volunteered for the study already had good grades and might not have needed an intervention in the first place.

Source: pxhere

Vāḍha mānasikatā Bhāratāta

Moving out of Europe and to a much different locale, this study randomly assigned a GMI to 107 3rd-grade classrooms in low-income schools in western India. Over the course of 10 one-hour sessions, nearly 1,000 students learned about neural plasticity and growth mindsets, while control students learned about the circulatory system. In addition, the researchers manipulated the classroom environment. Assuming that a growth mindset would influence showing up to class, they randomly assigned different incentive structures for class attendance:

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• Group 1: Teachers gave students a prize (e.g., pencils, erasers) if they achieved >85% attendance during the study.
• Group 2: Students chose their prize if they achieved >85% attendance during the study.
• Group 3: No prizes were awarded for attendance.

Only one group performed better than the others on a standardized test of knowledge, problem-solving skills, and analytic ability: High-achieving students who learned about growth mindsets AND who could choose their own prize for attendance. When incentives were absent or out of the children’s control, the GMI seemed to undermine the test performance of high-achieving students. For low-achieving students, the GMI had no impact.

Conclusions

These three studies, featuring different nations, cultures, and age groups, begin to paint a picture of how GMIs work outside of the U.S. One important finding is that these interventions may be most effective in the middle of the bell curve. While the Norwegian and Hungarian studies suggest that lower-performing students have the most to gain from a GMI, perhaps exceptionally disadvantaged students, like those struggling in the slums of western India, are not in a position to benefit from growth mindsets, either.

These studies also underscore the importance of the educational context in which a GMI is delivered. In Norway, only students on a vocational track benefited, perhaps because these students were more likely to have a fixed mindset regarding intelligence. In India, students only benefited when the environment instilled in them a sense of autonomy. In fact, under conditions that limited control, students who were previously doing well may have been hurt by the GMI, an outcome that should be avoided at all costs. These lessons should be tested stateside to understand whether these same conditions affect GMIs in the U.S.

Together, these studies begin to reveal the wellspring of knowledge—about growth mindsets, academic interventions, and behavioral science, generally—that we can discover by replicating U.S. research in other countries. Students both here and abroad will be better off for our efforts to understand how these psychosocial interventions differ across borders, across oceans, and across cultures.