What is Meant by “Growth Mindset”? Current Theory, Measurement Practices, and Empirical Results Leave Much Open to Interpretation

Abstract

The past decade has seen a rising interest in the growth mindset—the belief that abilities are malleable. At the same time, there have been rising criticisms. Macnamara and Burgoyne claim that growth mindset interventions do not yield meaningful effect sizes; growth mindset proponents argue that they do, for specific populations and under specific conditions. We speculate that disagreements stem from core questions for which this field has not yet answered or reached a consensus: What is meant by growth mindset and how it is measured? What is the process by which growth mindset is presumed to impact academic performance? And, what is the purpose of an intervention? We extend the discussions that Macnamara and Burgoyne and others have started about the theoretical constructs (meaning of intelligence, beliefs as uni- or multi-dimensional, process models and mediators) and practical impacts of growth mindset interventions (the value of examining heterogeneity, issues with scalability). Finally, we specify paths that may yield productive ways forward: developing better measures, rethinking what outcomes should be focal, fleshing out the theory and implications of a “meaning-systems” approach, and developing even broader-spectrum interventions that integrate science of learning findings with socio-motivational interventions to more strongly enhance learning outcomes.

Developing and Validating a Growth Mindset Scale for Young Children (GM-C)

“…Notably, prior work has consistently demonstrated that these nuances are empirically distinguishable-even among young children-and, perhaps surprisingly, sometimes only weakly related to one another (e.g., [12,48,49]). In light of these considerations, and consistent with recent calls for more multifaceted measures of mindsets that can better capture the complexity of people's reasoning about ability [50], we assessed two perspectives on changeability that we perceived to be conceptually central to mindsets: children's beliefs about the extent to which ability is (a) stable across time and (b) responsive to intervention. To make the questions as concrete and easy to follow as possible, we introduced participants to a drawing of a child character, provided the character with a name, and said that the character currently was either good or not good in one of the three domains.…”

“…Prior work has shown that children's judgments about the changeability of intellectual ability depend on its initial level, with children viewing high ability as less changeable than low ability (e.g., [51,52]). Considering these findings, we deemed it important to vary the initial ability level of the characters in the vignettes (see also [50]). Doing so also allowed us to make the content of the questions even more concrete, which is desirable given that the scale is intended for young children.…”

A Meta-Analysis on Teachers’ Growth Mindset

“…The following sections are devoted to a brief review of the conceptual underpinnings of the relationships between teachers' mindset and the three types of outcomes (teacher outcomes, instructional practices, student outcomes) and prior research on each of the respective associations. The selection of outcomes for our meta-analysis was guided by (a) conceptual ties between mindset and specific variables previously established in mindset research (e.g., variables that belong to the "meaning system" that mindsets create, such as goals, ; see also Yan & Schuetze, 2023), (b) the relevance of certain outcomes (i.e., student achievement) to research on teacher characteristics in general, further substantiated by recent increases in interest in teacher mindset and its role in promoting student achievement (e.g., Yeager et al, 2022), and (c) the consideration of instructional practices as critical outcomes on their own, also potentially serving as (behavioral) factors of transmission from teacher mindset to student outcomes (see also Blackwell et al, 2007;Lam & Zhou, 2020;Yan & Schuetze, 2023, for the importance of studying behaviors in mindset research).…”

“…In the present meta-analysis, we focused on three moderators related to the measurement of mindsets, considering that in any study or meta-analysis, the way constructs are translated into measures can largely affect the findings. Furthermore, measurement aspects might be particularly important to address in the mindset domain, due to several unresolved issues surrounding the assessment and definition of the construct (e.g., Limeri et al, 2020;Lüftenegger & Chen, 2017;Yan & Schuetze, 2023).…”

“…The implications of these assumptions and measurement strategies are not yet well understood but could hold far-reaching implications for research on mindsets. Specifically, if the strengths of relationships to outcomes differ between recoded and nonrecoded measures, it might be necessary to handle fixed and growth mindset items separately and to view them as separate constructs (see also Yan & Schuetze, 2023). In the present meta-analysis, we therefore tested whether dimensionality, and relatedly, recoded versus nonrecoded mindset measures affect the strength of relationships between teachers' mindset and the outcomes.…”