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Daeryan Padgett

ED 5252

Research Paper

02/26/2024

The battle of effective Growth Mindset implementation

For this assignment the topic being explored includes the effectiveness of teaching

growth mindsets to students. Does it make students more successful just knowing about growth

mindsets or do they have to be willing to accept incorporation of a growth mindset into their

education for it to be effective? Students are taught from a young age to believe that they have

fixed talents and abilities based on certain areas they are most successful in when compared to

their peers. In turn this belief causes most students to become discouraged and fall short of their

potential to grow when faced with academic challenges and often leads students to believe they

will always be a failure in those specific subjects because of their limited abilities and cause

them to lack self-efficacy. Comparably so, students who are taught from an early age to know

that these same abilities are indeed not fixed, learn to become motivated to get better before

burning themselves out and giving up. This way of teaching is the idea of a Growth Mindset, it

teaches individuals to believe in their own abilities to improve in areas they are not their best at,

to learn to overcome challenges and improve over time with hard work and dedication.

The idea of growth mindset in education is not anything knew, in fact there have been

many research studies and papers written on the impact teaching growth mindset to students, or
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lack thereof, has on their success in the classroom. Through these scholarly articles we can

examine experiments within growth mindset effectiveness on education. Some studies done

include the ones that will be discussed in this paper, including “The effects of a growth mindset

on self-efficacy and motivation” a study done by Emily Rhew, EdD, a special education teacher

from Connecticut who studied at Western Connecticut State University (Rhew, 120). Another

study includes, “Effectiveness of a growth mindset in education” written by Sarah Zintz, a

master's student from Northwestern College of Iowa (Zintz, 18). Finally, the third study that will

be looked at is, “Secondary teachers’ perspectives on sustaining growth mindset concepts in

classrooms” by Maria Jorif, a professor from the College of Doctoral Studies at University of

Phoenix (Jorif, 39).

In her study, Emily Rhew was investigating the idea of a growth mindset intervention

ossibly improving student’s self-efficacy and motivation in adolescent special education classes.

She studied students from grades ranging from 6th to 8th grade who specifically received learning

disability services in reading. The study was done using two groups, a comparison group and a

treatment group. As per the experiment, the treatment group received the growth mindset

intervention through Brainology, and the comparison group received no extra growth mindset

strategies. Rhew used two tests to measure a difference in mean scores, which were the Reader

Self-Perception Scale 2nd Edition, and the Motivation for Reading Questionnaire. These tests

measured whether the students had a different level of self-efficacy and motivation between each

group. The study's results ended up showing that there was a difference of motivation in the

students who used Brainology, but no difference in self-efficacy. Despite the lack of results

supporting the change in self-efficacy, Rhew still suggested to educators that considering

measuring student motivation and the growth mindset of those students who may be struggling
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academically, may help determine whether these students would benefit from a intervention like

Brainology for example. This study was quite educational about the steps that could be taken

prior to introducing growth mindsets into a classroom moving forward (Rhew,117).

In the study done by Sarah Zintz, the effectiveness of using a growth mindset in the

classroom on student academics was explored. This article explained in depth understanding of

the idea that students who can face challenges and learn from mistakes are more likely to be

successful when compared to students who feel that their intelligence is measured by their

natural ability to be academically successful. The study was done based on measured factors that

could predict high school graduation rates. The results suggested that the effectiveness of a

growth mindset in school culture was found to be well incorporated into the curriculum and

overall increased graduation rates that year. The study did find it was only possible for these

results to be found in other educational settings so long as teachers were knowledgeable and

willing to implement growth mindsets in their classrooms (Zintz, 405).

In the third scholarly article by Maria Jorif the perspectives of sustaining growth mindsets in

secondary educators are traversed, as well as some barriers that can affect sustainment. The study

utilized data through interviews with the teachers and a semi-structured focus group on the topic.

They found 4 major themes through analysis which included things like embedding growth

mindset into daily instruction, communicating affirmations and implementing growth mindset

learning tasks, allowing students to feel the flow of success and failures but with help in

overcoming them available, and lastly the support needed for teachers to implement such a skill.

The limitation mentioned for this study was the limit to only adolescent education teachers, and

not K-8 teachers, who could have had other suggestions in the matter (Jorif, 376).
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Overall, the three articles provided much insight into the incorporation of growth

mindset into classrooms, its effectiveness on graduation rates, student knowledge of the topic

and how teachers themselves feel that it should be implemented. As educators the main purpose

of our role in students' lives is to support and educate them to be their best selves. Through

implementing a growth mindset lesson into daily instruction, we can encourage self-regulation of

a healthy mindset in education, and support students in their development of the best version of

themselves. Whether these daily lessons are simply questions like “what happened this week in

school that made you proud of yourself? What about something that made you not so proud, or

made you feel like a failure? and How can we learn from that mistake? Simply putting thought

into students' minds of what they experience in school can make a huge difference in their

mindsets. Along with asking questions we can do positive affirmations before exams like “you

got this!” and “I believe I will pass this test” or for students who struggle with exams things like

“I will do my best and learn from my mistakes so I can do better next time”. Even just giving

students support to believe in themselves can crack open their narrow idea of their learning

capacity and help them open up to more subjects they labeled as “smart people subjects”.

Fostering growth mindsets can mean the difference between a student becoming burnt out,

failing out and dropping out or being successful, well-educated students and graduating.

Through these research studies and others, we can really determine the importance of integrating

a growth mindset lesson into instruction and its effectiveness on the frame of mind of each

student and how they visualize the importance of their education. Growth mindset is very often

not a known concept for students, and they may not even realize the lack of motivation or belief

they have in themselves and their education.

References

Jorif, M., & Burleigh, C. (2022). Secondary teachers' perspectives on sustaining growth

mindset concepts in instruction. Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching & Learning, 15(1),

243-378. https://doi.org/10.1108/JRIT-04-2020-0020

Rhew, E., Piro, J. S., Goolkasian, P., & Cosentino, P. (2018). The effects of a growth

mindset on self-efficacy and motivation. Cogent Education, 5(1), 109-120.

https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2018.1492337

Zintz, S. (2018). Effectiveness of a growth mindset in education. Educational

Psychology, 38(3), 261-408. https://doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2018.1444387