Browsing by Subject "Growth mindset"

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Academic math mindset interventions in first-year college calculus
(2017-07-21) Hunt, Joseph Franklin; Treisman, Uri; Davis, Kathy; Sadun, Lorenzo; Starbird, Michael; Schallert, Diane; Daniels, Mark
Freshman calculus is in the policy spotlight. This gateway course’s well-documented high failure rates impede students’ timely completion of baccalaureate degrees. The Mathematical Association of America launched a large-scale study of calculus instruction documenting the breath and intensity of efforts to increase student success. Concurrently, economic studies reveal high returns on investment for mathematics-dependent majors. This study examines whether brief, low-cost interventions targeting freshman calculus students’ beliefs about (1) the nature of intelligence, (2) the course content’s relevance to their goals, and (3) whether they belong to the community of successful mathematics students, can increase their academic performance. To this end, I developed and implemented 3 academic “math mindset” interventions. Each consisted of a video of former calculus students ostensibly reflecting on their experiences and their development and adoption of 1 of the 3 targeted math mindsets: growth (“math intelligence increases with effort”), purpose (“math is relevant to my future”), or belongingness (“I am a valued member of the mathematics community”). The videos lasted between 2 and 4 minutes and were embedded in online homework assignments in 18 first-semester calculus courses. The study included 663 participants. My measures include a validated test of conceptual understanding of differential calculus and self-report surveys of regulation of cognition, task value, control of learning, and self-efficacy. I observed no large significant effects of the interventions on the outcome measures. Unbeknown to me, a similar intervention was administered to all incoming freshmen during the same year; this could have contributed to the lack of positive results. A growing research base has demonstrated the effectiveness of academic mindset interventions in raising K-12 students’ academic achievement and persistence. This study explored the possible effectiveness of such interventions on college freshman. It provides an important reminder that mindset interventions are not guaranteed to deliver positive results, even when they address crucial student beliefs, and that contextual factors play a considerable role in their effectiveness. It adds to the developing suite of mindset interventions that may produce positive outcomes under other circumstances, and it provides educators with useful insight about the practical applications of academic mindsets in calculus classrooms.
Art, immersive learning technologies, and mindset : a mixed methods study
(2022-12-02) Myers, Ryan (Ph. D. in curriculum and instruction); Liu, Min, Ed. D.; Urrieta, Luis; Hamilton, Xiaofen; Davis, Mark
This dissertation is a report of a mixed methods study designed to examine art education, immersive learning technologies, and mindset. The study is based on the development and application of a digital online museum resource used as a mindset intervention and grounded in qualitative data about transforming existing museum curriculum to a digital online museum resource. The goal of the study was to statistically measure subjects’ changes in empathy towards undocumented immigrants from Mexico, implicit theories of self, beliefs about social mobility, and views of malleability of intelligence after engaging with the digital online museum resource. The researcher used an exploratory sequential design. This method has three phases: qualitative, development, and quantitative. Each phase builds sequentially off the prior phase. In the first phase of this study an ethnography was conducted between 2016-2018 to collect qualitative data to use as a narrative in relationship to a pre-selected artwork and museum lesson plan (n = 1). In the second phase of this study a digital online museum resource was developed, based on qualitative data in phase 1, and was tested for content validity. In the third phase the digital online museum resource was used as an intervention that was administered to a sample of undergraduate college students (n = 237) as part of an experimental design to quantitatively measure change in four domains of mindset: implicit theories of self (change_self), beliefs about social mobility (change_society, views of malleability of intelligence (change_IQ), and empathy towards undocumented immigrants from Mexico (change_empathy). To increase the rigor of the study, two intervention conditions were included in this phase: a more immersive and a less immersive condition. A mindset survey with four subscales was used as a pre and post intervention test to measure changes in mindset across the four mindset domains mentioned above. A repeated measures MANOVA, collapsed across experimental conditions, found a significant multivariate effect, F (4, 214) = 24.20, p < .001, indicating an overall positive mindset change from pretest to posttest. A follow up MANOVA found a significant multivariate effect, F (4, 213) = 6.72, p < .001, indicating an overall effect of condition. Additional univariate analyses revealed significant mean differences between condition A (more immersive) and B (less immersive) for change_IQ, F (1, 216) = 20.71, p < .001, change_society, F (1, 216) = 12.55, p < .001, change_person, F (1, 216) = 16.49, p < .001, and change_empathy, F (1, 216) = 18.10, p < .001. Participants exposed to the more immersive condition displayed greater change in all four domains. A 2 (Condition) x 2 (Ethnicity) ANOVA found no statistically significant effects of ethnicity for all four domains of mindset, and there were no significant Condition x Ethnicity interaction effects on all four mindset domains. A second 2 (Condition) x 2 (Gender) ANOVA found no statistically significant effects of gender for three of the four domains of mindset: change_IQ, change_society, and change_person. There was a statistically significant effect of gender for change_empathy, F (1, 213) = 4.049, p = .019. Additionally, there were no significant Condition x Gender interaction effects on all four mindset domains. In conclusion, results show a significant difference in pre and post intervention survey scores for all four mindset domains. The results also show significant mean differences in all four mindset domains between the two experimental conditions, with participants experiencing greater change in the more immersive condition. The researcher concludes that just as learning with art in a museum can be “an experience” (Dewey, 1934), learning with art online in a digital format, incorporating immersive learning technologies and digital storytelling, can also be “an experience.”
Developing productive learning mindsets in a freshman calculus course : an exploratory study
(2024-05) Winterer, Erica ; Treisman, Uri; Maura Borrego; Michael Starbird; Kristin Patterson
The promotion of belonging, purpose, and growth mindset through subtle social psychological interventions has been shown to positively impact student outcomes (Lazowski & Hulleman, 2016; Walton & Cohen, 2007; Yeager & Walton, 2011; Yeager et al., 2016). This study explores how instructor messaging and intentional course design can promote productive learning mindsets and influence student attributions of struggle or failure over time. Open-ended interviews were conducted with 15 former calculus students more than one year after the calculus course ended. A cross-case analysis was used to generate themes representative of shared experiences across interviewed students. The method of constant comparison was used to refine codes and group codes into categories using axial coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). Findings from this analysis suggested that students’ experiences in this introductory calculus course broadened their perspectives and taught them how to persist through challenging course work. Many students intimated that their experiences in calculus increased their confidence in their mathematical skill and their ability to be successful in difficult courses moving forward. Students described how they changed their behavior in response to the difficulty of the course and the supportive structures built into the class (e.g., homework help sessions, exam reviews, student study groups). The findings suggest that explicit instructor messaging targeting learning mindsets is most effective when the course design reinforces those messages.
Growth mindset in community colleges : a review of the literature
(2023-04-20) Delboy, Emilio, M. Ed.; Muenks, Katherine
Community colleges play a key role in American higher education, educating a disproportionate percentage of low-income and racially minoritized students. At the K-12 and four-year university level, there is some evidence that growth mindset, the idea abilities can be developed through hard work, is correlated with various measures of student success. Further, there is evidence that interventions that increase growth mindset can improve student outcomes, particularly for low-achieving students. In this report, I identify and review the literature focused on growth mindset and community colleges and find that while both students and faculty generally believe that growth mindset is an important component of academic success, the evidence on whether growth mindset is correlated with measurable academic achievement and of the efficacy of mindset interventions is mixed. I conclude with recommendations to help guide future research and practice related to growth mindset at the community college level.
Post hoc discernment of developmental mathematics noncognitive factors and concept transfer
(2016-12) Baker, Stephanie Nicole; Treisman, Uri; Riegle-Crumb, Catherine; Starbird, Michael; Saenz, Victor
One purpose of this study was to determine if students in a non-traditional developmental mathematics course improved on five developmental mathematics noncognitive factors—math equanimity, math mindset, math self-efficacy, math belongingness, and college belongingness—believed to be relevant to student success. I also examined if changes in these factors predicted course achievement. Another purpose was to explore whether or not Foundations students would transfer their knowledge to place value problems involving varied bases and contexts. A final purpose was to investigate the utility of then-surveys that retrospectively measure participants’ pre-intervention noncognitive factors. In response to policy pressures to increase completion rates, community colleges are experimenting with research-based strategies that create demand for learning, increase students’ competence valuation, and improve their productive persistence. The New Mathways Project’s Foundations of Mathematical Reasoning course is built around one such strategy. In this exploratory study (N = 597), I investigated the impact of using Foundations on the development of students’ noncognitive factors and on mathematical success. My student measures included: pre-post-then-surveys of noncognitive factors, math course grades, math final exam grades, percent attendance, a place value assessment of transfer, and one-on-one interviews. I used multilevel models to analyze my quantitative research questions and created evidence markers for qualitative analysis of the transfer assessment. I conducted interviews to provide additional insight. Students significantly improved their math equanimity, but had stable, mid-range scores on the other factors. Positive changes in math self-efficacy and low initial math equanimity were associated with higher grades. Pre-surveys of equanimity may be more accurate than then-surveys, but pre-surveys of math mindset, math self-efficacy, and math belongingness may be interchangeable with then-surveys. Contrary to popular findings, the then-surveys did not provide larger estimates of program effects than pre-surveys. Overall, students evidenced minimal transfer. Interviewees exhibited greater changes in noncognitive factors and evidenced more transfer than other students. This study provides valuable information for the potential users of the NMP materials. It contributes to, and points out complications with, transfer research. Lastly, it adds to research on retrospective measures, which are rarely used in mathematics education research.
Status, respect, and adolescents’ responsiveness to educational interventions
(2023-12) Medrano, Fortunato N.; Yeager, David S.; Crosnoe, Robert; Harden, K. Paige; Church-Lang, Jessica A.; Bryan, Christopher J.
As adolescents progress through school, they exhibit declining interest and motivation, which can have lifelong negative consequences. The adolescent status-respect sensitivity hypothesis posits that adolescents do not only consider how beneficial education is to their long-term success, but they also pay disproportionate attention to whether their environment is affording them respect before deciding whether they will align their behavior with their long-term educational interests. Here, respect is defined as a gestalt judgment of whether one's rights, beliefs, and abilities are being afforded. In this dissertation, we test for the first time, a key prediction of the status-respect sensitivity hypothesis: adolescents’ feelings of being respected in their environment should moderate the extent to which they profit from an attempt to influence their academic motivation and achievement (Study 1). We do this by examining the moderating effect of feeling respected on a growth mindset of intelligence intervention delivered in a nationally representative sample. Then we show this effect operates on an individual level, that is, how different students in the same class report different levels of respect from the same teacher and these within classroom differences explain variation in intervention effects. Next, we address the most significant barrier standing in the way of teachers being able to act on these findings: a lack of clarity about which teacher practices communicate respect to adolescents most effectively (Study 2). Using an inductive qualitative process, involving adolescents’ own descriptions of teacher’s respectful practices, we show that there is very little consensus about specific behaviors that were respectful or disrespectful. However, there were higher-order organizations of practices that led to a simple and practical framework of respect. Respect emerged from the combination of high standards conveying that a student could be competent and valuable and therefore has worth to the group (i.e., academic press), and providing the necessary support to help the student meet these high expectations. These inductive conclusions were confirmed using applications of natural language processing and machine learning with the language data. While promising, Study 2’s results were based on a small number of adolescents. To assess whether the framework generalized, we applied it to student reports of teacher behavior in a nationally representative dataset (Study 3). Using a machine learning analytical technique, we found comparable results, whereby students reported feeling more respected by teachers if those teachers had high academic press and offered supports to meet high standards. Overall, these studies highlight respect as a potential mechanism through which adults’ behaviors influence adolescent behavior. This is important because it suggests that during this developmental stage of adolescence, individual experiences of respect from the environment could be having powerful effects on adolescent trajectories. Furthermore, by providing educators with a “recipe” for respectful interactions in the classroom, this dissertation simplifies for teachers the challenge of motivating and engaging their students. This theory could be extended beyond academic motivation to other key areas of adolescent behavior, e.g., drug use, school discipline, reckless driving, healthy eating, and more.