The Influence of Both a Basic and an In-Depth Introduction of Growth Mindset on First-Year Engineering Students' Intelligence Beliefs

摘要

Growth mindset is a popular educational theory with empirical ties to motivation and persistence. Despite its popularity, the implementation of the theory in practice risks being over-simplified in the ways it is introduced to students and measured with established survey items. This oversimplification provides a limited research-based understanding of the complex ways in which students react to the theory or the influence that learning about the theory has on their personal beliefs. To expand prior work in this area, we conducted the current study by collecting both quantitative (survey) and qualitative (written reflections) data from first-year engineering students about their intelligence beliefs for (1) a sample of students who received a brief, in-class introduction to the theory (n = 66), and (2) a sub-sample of students who engaged in a more in-depth intervention (n = 6). Our findings show that neither the in-class introduction nor the more in-depth intervention had a statistically significant influence on students' intelligence beliefs, but the in-depth intervention did provide students with a more nuanced understanding of growth mindset theory. Many participants linked growth mindset exclusively to valuing effort. Implications of this study for engineering educators include that given the complexity of growth mindset, a brief introduction into mindset theory is not adequate for significant change in beliefs. Implications also include that survey items alone may not be indicative of growth mindset and qualitative approaches may be necessary for researchers to gain a more holistic understanding of students' intelligence beliefs.