The Growth Mindset theory states that how someone views their abilities impacts on how they think, feel and behave in future tasks. It is now arguably the most popular psychological theory in education. Growth Mindset has been associated with a range of benefits that include persistence, seeking better feedback, coping better with transitions, grit, and pro-social behaviours. These are often the behaviours associated with doing well at school. But does it translate into better grades?
Numerous studies conducted by many different researchers have found a strong relationship between students who have a growth mindset and the grades they achieved. Researchers Susana Claro, David Paunesku and Carol Dweck from Stamford University recently reported a large scale study of over 160,000 students) which found that growth mindset predicts grades across every socio-economic level in students in Chile.
Another study by Jason Snipes, who is the Director of Alliance Research for WestEd, found that in 121, 835 pupils in America, those with lower grades were more likely to have a fixed mindset. Both of these studies are fascinating and very important as they use a very large sample size (potentially adding weight to their findings). Likewise, a different study by David Paunesku, Gregory Walton.
Carissa Romero, Eric Smith, David Yeager and Carol Dweck from Stamford University and the University of Texas on 1,500 students found that combining a growth mindset and a sense of purpose intervention improved the likelihood of students completing Maths, English and Science courses and doing better along the way.
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