Giving Compass' Take:

· Victoria Sisk was still an undergraduate student at Case Western Reserve University when she first discovered the growth mindset theory through Carol Dweck's Ted Talk. In an interview with The Hechinger Report, Sisk discusses the conflicting results from studies of growth mindset programs for students. 

· Should we invest in growth mindset programs for early childhood education if the results aren't consistent? 

· Read more about the growth mindset program research and effects on student performance.


When Victoria Sisk was an undergraduate student at Case Western Reserve University in 2015, she watched Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck deliver an online TED Talk about the power of having a “growth mindset,” a theory Dweck developed. Dweck’s theory is that academic talent isn’t a fixed trait but rather a skill students can develop through hard work and perseverance.  Convincing students that this is true in a relatively brief session can make a long-term difference, Dweck says.

“If you can do a 30-minute computer-based intervention that meaningfully improves a students’ learning, that’s amazing,” Sisk recalls thinking. “I wasn’t going into it skeptically at all.”

What started out as Sisk’s senior thesis eventually mushroomed into a gigantic research project to analyze all the rigorous studies she could find on growth mindset, which many educational consultants have embraced and sold as programs to schools. Two Case Western professors joined Sisk, along with two other researchers, and what they found three years later were mixed results.

“We didn’t find evidence for profound effects and large gains,” said Brooke Macnamara, a Case Western psychology professor and lead author of the study, published in the April 2018 issue of Psychological Science. “When there are strong claims, there should be strong, consistent evidence to back them up.”

Among 29 studies tracking more than 57,000 students, some showed large academic gains. Others showed zero, or even negative academic results compared to students who didn’t receive growth mindset training. Overall, when the researchers combined all the studies, students’ grades or test scores tended to rise by a “tiny” amount after participating in a mindset program to persuade them that intelligence can grow.

Read the full article about growth mindset programs by Jill Barshay at The Hechinger Report.