Changing Students’ Beliefs About Learning Can Unveil Their Potential

Abstract

Too often, students fall short of their potential. Although structural and cognitive factors can contribute to this underperformance, how students subjectively construe themselves and their educational contexts can also play significant roles. Social-psychological interventions can increase student motivation, resilience, and achievement by altering these construals. To provide general recommendations for their implementation, we focus on interventions that address common student concerns, which stem from maladaptive beliefs that (a) intelligence cannot be improved; (b) some academic topics are uninteresting and personally irrelevant; (c) learning is an unplanned, passive activity; and (d) others think that “people like me” do not have the potential for success. These interventions tend to be relatively brief, easily implemented, highly scalable, and low in cost, time, and labor. Through a partnership of psychological scientists and practitioners, these carefully contextualized, theory-driven interventions can help students achieve their potential.

An English Learning: Rural Students Beliefs

“…Motivation and expectation appear to be the most common beliefs possessed by rural junior high schools students in Teunom. This finding comes in line with the finding of earlier research who also found motivation and expectation as the most common beliefs held by the students in their research (O'Keefe et al, 2021;Torres & Alieto, 2019). In addition, motivation and expectation is the primary factor in language learning and because of that learning should be enjoyable.…”

“…Besides, to provide more evidence that beliefs have a major influence on learners' achievement, many studies report that learners who hold positive beliefs about language learning acquire higher proficiency levels compare to those who do not have (Jaekel et al, 2017;Saito et al, 2018). Moreover, many studies prove that beliefs can influence the learning process which may either help or hinder the success of language acquisition itself (Huang et al, 2020;Jennifer & Park, 2015;Mueller & Dunlosky, 2017;O'Keefe et al, 2021). For example, if studying a language is considered important or interesting, students will reveal a higher degree of motivation and thus their mastery of the language will increase (Lasagabaster, 2017).…”

Confronting Failure: Building Confidence and Resilience in Undergraduate Researchers

“…Additionally, Betz and colleagues (2021) found that students who participated in undergraduate research opportunities experienced increased STEM identity and enhanced academic self-concepts. Students who possess positive academic self-concepts not only achieve academic success, but also hold a sense of belonging in the field (Rainey et al 2018;Chen et al 2021). Therefore, helping URM cultivate a positive "geoscience" identity may increase performance in their courses.…”

“…There are various socio-psychological factors that influence students' ability to achieve academic success and hinder their personal and professional growth. Some of these factors include fearing failure (Bledsoe and Baskin 2014), facing stereotype threats (Spencer, Logel, and Davies 2016), having poor science identity (Chen et al 2021) and possessing fixed mindsets Blackwell, Trzesniewski, and Dweck 2007;. Although fear of failure is ubiquitous for students, there may be some components of this issue that are more prominent or unique to URM students.…”

The Influence of Open Ended Learning Model on Mathematical Problem Solving Ability

“…Abstract learning media is also one of the factors for the low mathematical problem solving ability of elementary school students (Suryaningtyas, 2017). Elementary school students more easily understand a lesson that is accompanied by examples that exist in their daily lives (O'Keefe et al, 2021;Riyanto & Gunarhadi, 2017). For example, in the area of perimeter and area of flat shapes, it is better if the teacher gives examples of flat figures using visual aids that can not only be seen by students but can also be held by students.…”