The influence of both a basic and an in-depth introduction of growth mindset on first-year engineering students’ intelligence beliefs

• Autores: Emily Dringenberg, Amy Kramer
• Localización: The International journal of engineering education, ISSN-e 0949-149X, Vol. 35, no. 4, 2019, págs. 1052-1063
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Growth mindset is a popular educational theory with empirical ties to motivation and persistence. Despite its popularity, theimplementation of the theory in practice risks being over-simplified in the ways it is introduced to students and measured withestablished survey items. This oversimplification provides a limited research-based understanding of the complex ways in whichstudents react to the theory or the influence that learning about the theory has on their personal beliefs. To expand prior work inthis area, we conducted the current study by collecting both quantitative (survey) and qualitative (written reflections) data fromfirst-year engineering students about their intelligence beliefs for (1) a sample of students who received a brief, in-class introductionto the theory (n = 66), and (2) a sub-sample of students who engaged in a more in-depth intervention (n = 6). Our findings showthat 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 mindsettheory. Many participants linked growth mindset exclusively to valuing effort. Implications of this study for engineering educatorsinclude that given the complexity of growth mindset, a brief introduction into mindset theory is not adequate for significant changein beliefs. Implications also include that survey items alone may not be indicative of growth mindset and qualitative approachesmay be necessary for researchers to gain a more holistic understanding of students’ intelligence beliefs.