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Practices that support development

Shifting to a more growth orientation is correlated with increases in student achievement (ex: small-moderate improvements in GPA and completion rates). Research on mindsets has primarily focused on mindset interventions targeted at improving student performance (Aronson et al., 2002; Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007; Burnette, O'Boyle, VanEpps, Pollack, & Finkel, 2013; Good et al., 2003; H. Y. Hong & Lin-Siegler, 2012; Lin-Siegler, Ahn, Chen, & Fang, 2016; Paunesku et al., 2015; Yeager, Romero, & Paunesku, 2016a; Yeager et al., 2016b).

Most mindset interventions are grounded on two key components:

1. Learning about neuroplasticity: Research on how people learn and acquire new skills is used to illustrate the point that the brain is malleable. To highlight this concept, the interventions often present studies that show macroscopic changes in the brain (increase in volume or density of a certain brain region) resulting from skill acquisition after an intensive learning experience. This part of the intervention is used to change underlying beliefs about intelligence and ability.
2. Writing task: Students advocate the malleability of intelligence message by acting as mentors. Participants apply what they have learned about neuroplasticity to advise a (hypothetical) struggling student and in the process are encouraged to relate personal experiences of academic struggle. The purpose of this part of the intervention is to facilitate the internalization of its message, that intelligence and ability are malleable: “generating and then advocating a persuasive message to a receptive audience is a powerful means of self-persuasion” (Yeager & Walton, 2011).

Initial interventions were deployed either in the lab or through small teaching sessions embedded in existing courses. More recently, researchers have used online platforms to scale the reach of mindset interventions. Currently online interventions typically consist of 2, 45-minutes online sessions (Yeager et al., 2016b).

Environmental mindsets, such as the mindset communicated by a teacher or professor’s instructional practices, can influence the behavior of individuals regardless of the students’ original orientation (Park, Gunderson, Tsukayama, Levine, & Beilock, 2016; Rattan, Good, & Dweck, 2012). Therefore, it is important that a growth mindset is conveyed through the behavior exhibited by instructors in the classroom. Classroom practices that can support the development of a growth mindset include:

• Normalizing the experience of mistakes and failure by:

a) using personal examples and examples from others. It is helpful for students to develop a clear understanding of the difficult, sometimes faltering process that is required to achieve success. Interventions that exposed students to narratives of eminent physicists modeling how they themselves overcame failures and struggles, improved physics learning (recall of facts and problem solving) and increased their interest in physics (H. Y. Hong & Lin-Siegler, 2012; Lin-Siegler et al., 2016).

b) emphasizing the importance of failure and iteration in the engineering design process and in research. Although the connection between mindset and the research/engineering process has not been rigorously evaluated, it is possible that explicitly destigmatizing failure in this way may help students adopt a growth mindset orientation and help them embrace educational challenges (ex: interdisciplinary projects that require students to explore unknown areas) and risks.

• Praising for effort and strategies rather than intelligence (Mueller & Dweck, 1998).
• Teaching students that feedback is an important component of the learning process. It is important to teach students how to objectively interpret feedback, particularly in the context of MIT where extremely high standards apply. A recent online intervention with participants from a highly selective private university (Study 3 in Yeager et al., 2016b), used a ‘critical feedback’ intervention to help student change their relationship to criticism. In the intervention condition, students were taught that critical feedback from professors and other instructors reflected “high standards and confidence that students can meet those standards, not a negative judgment of the student or his/her potential” (Yeager et al., 2016b). Past research has demonstrated that clarifying the intent of critical feedback, can increase students’ motivation to revise or improve their work, particularly for students who are more at risk of stereotype threat (Cohen, Steele, & Ross, 1999).
• Challenge the notion that learning should feel easy. Students who are taught to reframe their interpretations of why a task might be difficult (ex: learning something new can be difficult) improve their performance during demanding tasks (Wilson, Damiani, & Shelton, 2002). Instructors can help students reframe their interpretations of learning difficulty by:

a) Using personal examples of times when they struggled to learn something and had to exert effort to learn.

b) Explaining to students how learning takes place and relating how difficulty to learn something new is normal and expected:

• deep conceptual understanding - the re-organization of mental frameworks, and accommodation for new understanding - requires time and effort.
• learning is facilitated by prior learning- i.e. it is easier to learn something of which you have prior knowledge than to learn something completely knew. Retrieval of information becomes easier for content/concepts that have been previously contextualized.
• many central concepts at the heart of disciplines are not obvious or intuitive to a novice; they are the product of hard-won inquiry.
• behaviors that make studying feel less effortful may not be desirable for learning (E. L. Bjork & Bjork, 2011). For example, testing yourself by doing a new set of problems, rather than re-reviewing previously solved problems might feel more effortful and difficult, but leads to better performance & deeper learning (see ‘Spacing & interleaving’ in Cognitive section).
• Communicate that abilities can grow over time. Mindset interventions demonstrate that teaching students about neuroplasticity has the potential to change their beliefs about the nature of intelligence and ability. Other instructional considerations that may foster that abilities and intelligence can be developed are:

a) Explaining to students how expertise develops. Expertise is achieved by zeroing in on weaknesses and tackling those aggressively, a form of practice called deliberate practice. While regular practice might involve mindless repetition of a particular task, deliberate practice requires focused attention to deficiencies and constant feedback. The goal of deliberate practice is not to just meet someone’s potential but to build it by continuing to move beyond someone’s current ability level (zone of proximal development) (Ericsson & Pool, 2016). Communicating the process for increasing competence for a particular skill and providing examples and strategies to demonstrate skill development within a domain can help students ‘see’ 1) that abilities and intelligence are not immutable and 2) that struggle, and mistakes are a natural process of learning as we seek experiences that stretch our comfort zones.

b) Providing assignments and exams where students can show progress over time, such as test corrections and projects/papers that incorporate cycles of feedback and revision so that students have the opportunity to improve their work with each iteration.

Implementation Examples

Mindset interventions have been performed primarily during transitional academic times (ex: transition from 6^th to 7^th grade, entering 9^th grade students or during college registration), most likely because these are times when challenge might appear and the effectiveness of these interventions can be measured. For the most part, mindset interventions have not been embedded within courses. While mindset interventions for students have been well-researched, there is no data on whether current professional development programs for teachers (i.e. to educate them on the concept of mindset and implications for the classroom) have had any effectiveness with regard to student outcomes.

Institutional programs that aim to normalize struggles: Various peer institutions have started collecting and sharing experiences of struggle and failure from faculty and students. Most notably:

• Stanford Resilience Project: “combines personal storytelling, events, programs, and academic skills coaching to motivate and support students as they experience the setbacks that are a normal part of a rigorous education.” In addition to a host of campus resources, the Resilience Project has a large collection of personal stories of struggle, and hosts a variety of events (for instance, the annual ‘Stanford, I screwed up!’ event).
• Princeton Perspective Project: “provides a space where students can share stories of failures, rejections, and struggles through videos, writing, and creative expression.”

Mindset interventions that are embedded within courses: the Northeastern co-op program provides students with the opportunity to engage in full-time employment related to their academic and/or career interests while pursuing their degrees. Students in this program take a preparatory course prior to engaging in full-time work which explicitly teaches them about mindsets to equip students with tools that they can use to maximize learning in their work experiences.

Mindset training at MIT: T+LL offers two different types of mindset training

• Short workshop on mindset during ‘TA days’: TA days is a two-day training for graduate TAs at MIT. Participation in this workshop is subject to a department’s discretion and in most departments, TA training is not required.
• IAP course ‘How to succeed at MIT and beyond- developing a growth mindset’: this course focuses on the development of a growth mindset and on learning strategies. It is a four-part workshop series on how to develop a growth mindset orientation. Although aimed all students, graduate students and postdocs form the majority of the participation. Shorter versions of this course have been offered to various groups on campus (ex: Concourse learning community, Graduate Student Appreciation Week, and various visiting lectures).

Overview | Examples | Caveats| References | Printable PDF