Exploring growth mindset experiences in university students

Abstract

Students that classify as having growth mindsets rather than fixed mindsets enjoy greater academic success. This finding has been repeated in a variety of contexts and encourages teachers and researchers to develop growth mindsets in students. However, neutral and negative conclusions from some mindset intervention studies raise questions about the conditions in which growth mindsets develop. This study contributes evidence and suggestions to guide the development and assessment of growth mindsets in university students. The five-stage behaviour change model provides a framework to explain why mindset interventions may cause shifts that are not detected in the short term. Mindset assessment methods with original and adapted scales are presented and critiqued. I compare literature-sourced experiences used in growth mindset interventions with interview data from seven first-year engineering students at a South African university to help determine if growth mindset interventions for university students are worth implementing. I summarise implications for practice when assessing mindsets or using growth mindset interventions.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic achievement
• university students
• fixed mindset
• implicit theories of intelligence
• student success
• intervention
• behaviour change

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to helpful suggestions from my PhD supervisors Tracy Craig and Brandon Collier-Reed, anonymous reviewers, and members of Helen Sword's WriteSPACE. Special thanks to the students who generously volunteered their time for interviews. This work is adapted from a chapter in my PhD (Campbell, 2020).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Research Foundation [grant number TTK160531166788]; University of Cape Town.