Mindset theory holds that believing abilities are malleable brings better outcomes, achievement among them, while believing them fixed brings worse ones. Schools around the world adopted interventions built on that. Two meta-analyses then asked the size question from both ends: how strongly mindset and achievement are related, across 365,915 students, and how well the interventions work. What did the pooling give?
Weak effects at both ends. The first meta-analysis, covering 273 studies and 365,915 students, found the relationship between mindset and weak overall. The second, covering 43 studies and 57,155 students, found the interventions weak too. Some results did support specific tenets of the theory: students with low socioeconomic status, or who are , might benefit from a mindset intervention.
Mindsets, or implicit theories, are beliefs about whether human attributes are fixed or malleable. The theory holds that students with enjoy many positive outcomes, higher academic achievement among them, while peers with fixed mindsets fare worse. Schools around the world built interventions on it.
Two meta-analyses tested the chain from both ends. The first examined the strength of the relationship between mindset and academic achievement across 273 studies and 365,915 students. The second examined the effectiveness of mindset interventions on achievement across 43 studies and 57,155 students.
Overall effects were weak in both. That is the headline, and it matters more for the second analysis than the first, because an intervention is a thing schools pay for and timetable. A weak pooled effect does not mean nothing happened anywhere; it means the average classroom should not expect much.
Some results did support specific tenets of the theory. Students with low socioeconomic status, and students who are academically at risk, might benefit from mindset interventions, which is a narrower and more plausible claim than the one that traveled. Read those subgroup findings as within a pooled analysis rather than as trials designed for those students, and treat them as a direction for research instead of a settled result.
wat. Pooled across hundreds of thousands of students, the mindset effect came out weak, and what survived was a hint about the students with the least to begin with.
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The policy took the strong version and the evidence supports the narrow one. A small average effect concentrated in disadvantaged and struggling students is a case for targeting, not for a poster in every classroom.
How do we know?
Sisk and colleagues ran two meta-analyses, one on the mindset and achievement relationship across 273 studies, one on intervention effectiveness across 43 studies, each testing potential moderating factors.
What is still unknown
Meta-analytic averages hide variation between interventions, and the subgroup findings are moderator results rather than trials aimed at those students, so they are a lead to follow rather than a conclusion.
Learn something?
Where to next
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