Academic Mindsets

Mindsets are a student's attitudes towards and beliefs about themselves in relation to academic work.

Considerable evidence suggests that academic mindsets are malleable to both interventions and classroom context. Furthermore, changing students’ mindsets or beliefs about themselves and the way they learn can result in improvements in academic performance and may close ethnic gaps in achievement (Farrington et al., 2012). This is because positive academic mindsets are believed to affect students' motivation to learn and consequently their perseverance to persist in their learning over time. 

Motivation or, the force or energy that results in engagement with learning (ACD, 2015) is a key component of fostering learner agency because when students are motivated they are engaged and when students are engaged they are more likely to experience a sense of agency. For example, Davis (2018), in her literature review, asserts that "...intrinsic motivation drives students to put effort themselves into their own learning... to have power and control over their own learning" (p. 32). In other words, mindsets 'work' to foster agency because they give rise to increased motivation which in turn stimulates effort.

A review of the literature suggests that there are four specific academic mindsets (elsewhere termed agency related factors) which serve to foster motivation and perseverance. These are: self-concept, self-efficacy, and value which we will refer to as self-relevancy. Of these mindsets, self-efficacy, a student's belief in their own ability to learn, is the factor which bridges academic mindsets with the second aspect of our model, academic perseverance. For this reason, self-efficacy is often seen as the heart of learner agency. 

Here's a brief summary of the four academic mindsets: 

• Self-concept is a student's belief about their identity as a learner. 

• Self-efficacy is a student's belief about their ability to learn. (This includes Growth Mindset, a student's belief that their ability can grow with effort). 

• Self-relevancy is (defined by us as) a student's belief about the value  (importance, usefulness and interest) of a learning task.

Please click on the icons below to read more about each factor and associated teaching strategies which are believed to boost agency.  Links to self perception surveys have also been included.