Educational Psychology for Everyone -podcast, episode #1
Growth Mindset
Guest: Dr. Junlin Yu, hosting Katja Upadyaya.
Transcript
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Katja Upadyaya
Welcome everyone to the Educational Psychology for Everyone -podcast. My name is Katja Upadyaya, and today we are talking about growth mindset.
Researchers have long been interested in knowing more about mindsets – growth mindset in particular. People with a growth mindset tend to embrace challenges and persist in the face of setbacks. In many fields, such as education, sports, business and psychology, cultivating a growth mindset is often encouraged as it fosters, for example, resilience and personal improvement.
But what is growth mindset? Today we have Doctor Junlin Yu as a guest and he will tell us more about his research on growth mindset and what it really is. Doctor Yu got his PhD at Cambridge, UK in the field of psychology of education, and currently he is working as a postdoctoral researcher at University of Helsinki.
Welcome, Doctor Yu to our podcast.
Junlin Yu
Thank you, Katja.
Katja
So, let’s first talk about growth mindset. Could you tell me, how would you define the growth mindset – what it really is?
Junlin
Yes. So, growth mindset is the belief that your ability is malleable and can be developed. And the opposite of that is a fixed mindset where you believe your ability is fixed and you have no control over it.
Katja
And what framework is typically used to study growth mindset or fixed mindset?
Junlin
Do you mean like methodological or…
Katja
Is there some theory behind it or?
Junlin
Yes. So, I think mostly the growth mindset research paradigm is linked to Carol Dweck’s work. She has been the leading figure in growth mindset research and she has conducted a lot of experimental research and currently growth mindset interventions, trying to change and cultivate students growth mindset.
But you know, I think scientific breakthrough is often a collective effort, even though most people associate the word of growth mindset with Carol Dweck, there are also, like other hidden figures who are instrumental in establishing this research field.
For example, one of the first mindset empirical study is conducted by Mary Bandura, the daughter of the famous Albert Bandura. So, during her doctoral research in the 80s, she collaborated with Carol Dweck and conducted one of the first empirical study on children’s mindset about intelligence.
And also there is John Nichols, who was at the University of Illinois at the same time with Carol Dweck, and he talked about – he is clearly one of the key figures in achievement goal research – but he also talked about this two different conceptualizations of ability. So, in one conceptualizations people believe that ability and the effort are positively related: so if you work harder then you’re going to get smarter. And in the other conceptualization, effort and ability is inversely related: so if you have to try very hard then it means your ability is low. So I do see a lot of parallels between John Nichols conceptualization of ability and Carol Dweck’s mindset of intelligence.
Katja
Oh right, that’s really interesting! Thank you. Thank you for telling us about it.
You mentioned initially the fixed mindset and the malleable mindset and the beliefs in abilities. Could you kind of like, tell us more about it? What does it mean in everyday life? What does it mean for students or other people who are thinking about their performance and goals and so on?
Junlin
Yes. So, I think in everyday life, if everything is going well, if you are performing well, then having a fixed mindset is not necessarily very harmful because you are confident in your ability and you believe you have high ability. But these different mindsets tend to be most impactful when things become harder, when you encounter challenges. Then how you think about your ability might play a bigger role in terms of your decision to persist or not. Because if you believe their ability is low and you have no control over it and it’s not going to change, then maybe the best idea is to just give up right now because you are not going to get better at it. But if you believe your ability is malleable and can be developed over time, then it’s less encouraging when you encounter any setback or challenges, because your current ability doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be like this forever and you can actually get better in the future.
Katja
And then, are these mindsets, are they realistic? Do they really tell us who we are, or are they just our perceptions of ourselves?
Junlin
Yes, I think so. These are people’s personal beliefs. So, in educational or psychological research, we often emphasize people’s subjective interpretation. Because two students might have objectively more or less the same ability, but they have very different subjective beliefs about how malleable their abilities are. And that their motivation and behavior are going to be different depending on their subjective mindsets or beliefs.
Katja
So, can the person have both growth mindset and fixed mindset, or how does it really work? Are they associated with each other or?
Junlin
Yeah, so mindset is not like a general construct. It’s often domain specific. So, you might have a growth mindset like in finish, for example. But you might hold a fixed mindset in math, so you believe that you are either a math person or you’re not, and you can’t really improve on your math ability. Or you might have like a fixed mindset in your personal life and you believe you know your partner is who they are and they’re not going to change. So, I think depending on which life domain you are talking about, you can have like different mindsets.
Katja
- So they kind of like go across the fields or domains, and different situations. I can’t mind this situation.
Junlin
Yes, absolutely. So, all these experimental research shows that, you know, you can easily change students or people’s mindset in specific situations. So, in a lot of the experimental or intervention studies researchers gave out, like a text to the participants and asked them to read about these different nature of intelligence and some of the text might portray intelligence in a more fixed manner and telling the participants that your ability is more or less innate and it’s not going to change a lot over time. But some other participants read text about the malleable nature of intelligence, and if you work harder, then these neural connections will form in your brain to help you become smarter. And then after reading those texts, students or participants tend to endorse more of a growth mindset.
Katja
Oh, that’s very interesting!
So, but if you are a student and you feel that you are kind of like stuck. That you feel that you don’t have the abilities to perform in some domain, say math for example. And you have kind of like a fixed mindset in math, but you also see yourself in a way objectively that you recognize that, ok, this is also my perception, this is maybe blocking me from performing better. Is there something that you can do about it. What can you, can you build a growth mindset, or can you develop it somehow?
Junlin
Yes. And I would like to think of this as more of a contextual issue. So, it’s not just up to the students or putting the blame on the student, because often times it’s easy to say all these students are lower performing because they don’t have a growth mindset. But oftentimes maybe the environment or their achievement experiences convey to them that you know their ability is not changing over time. So, I think it’s really important to, like intervene earlier on, because if you have been performing poorly persistently, and not being able to improve then, that’s a very concrete experience that’s telling you that, oh, maybe your ability is not improving. So, I think teachers might be able to intervene early by, you know, giving these students extra support to show them that they can perform well or to help them set more proximal goals and so they can monitor their own process and they’re to help students to notice that they’re improving and progressing towards their own goal. So that kind of perceptions of progress or improvement will help students to gradually develop more of a growth mindset.
Katja
Yeah, that’s very good. And are there developmental differences in growth mindsets or fixed mindsets?
Junlin
Yeah. So, there is a lot of literature showing that young children tend to be very optimistic and they believe that they can develop their ability if they work very hard at something. But I think the key developmental stage is between the age of 10 to 12 years old. That’s where students start to think about ability and effort in a inversely related manner. So, they start to understand that, you know, if a task is the same for two students, but one student need to work a lot harder at it, then it probably means that that particular student has lower ability. So, gradually over time I think students tend to develop more of a fixed mindset also because of the change in the school environment when you move… So, in primary school, you tend not to emphasize so much about ability. But once you get into, for example, lower secondary school, there might be more ability grouping and more emphasis on students’ performance because your grades would matter for entering upper secondary school. So this kind of broader changes in the learning climate also contribute to the development of a fixed mindset.
Katja
So, do students also compare themselves with each others?
Junlin
Yes, I think that social comparison is a key factor in contributing to the development of a fixed mindset. Yes, so, if teachers publicly praise the students’ ability or showing their work as a model to the other students, then it makes the social comparisons very salient, and that would help students to notice the difference between their own ability and other students’ ability.
Katja
Yeah. And then, but what about the benefits of growth mindset? Why is it good to have growth mindset? Is it beneficial for learning or some other things in life?
Junlin
Yes. So, in the latest Pisa – not the latest now because we have the Pisa 2022 – but in Pisa 2018, in 72 of the 74 participating nations, having a growth mindset is linked to higher academic achievement. So that’s very encouraging and it’s showing that this effect is not limited to a particular cultural context. And also, having a growth mindset is linked to higher student well-being in educational systems that emphasize standardized testing.
Katja
So, you mentioned here the cultures – so, are there cultural differences in growth mindset research? What has research found before?
Junlin
Yes. So, there is some research showing that in Asian cultures, in more collectivist cultures, people are more likely to believe that everyone can become highly intelligent. But in the more individualist cultures, people tend to believe that high intelligence is limited to a smaller subset of the people and not everyone has the potential to become highly intelligent.
Katja
Oh, that’s very interesting! We should learn more about that.
And what about some other areas of life? Is growth mindset associated with well-being or some other factors, other than studying or learning?
Junlin
Yeah, so there are some research about growth mindset, about shyness. So, if you believe your shyness is something fixed, and it’s part of your personality and it’s not going to change. Then you might get more anxious when engaging in public speaking. But if you believe that you have more of a growth mindset about your shyness and believe that that can change over time and you can train yourself to be less shy and socially anxious. Then that would also improve your ability to engage and interact with other people in social situations.
Katja
Oh, that’s very interesting!
And then, you earlier mentioned the attributions and also Nichol’s work, and I heard you sometimes mentioning attributions with the mindsets. Could you tell us a little bit more, how they are associated with it with each other?
Junlin
Yes. People often think about growth mindset as this new thing, but it’s new to the general, it becomes well known in the general public.
But it has long tradition in the research world. The mindset concept is built directly on attribution theory, as you mentioned. So, attribution is peoples or students explanations for their success and failures. So. If you are not doing so well in your exam, how would you explain that poor performance? So, some students might explain it in terms of their low ability. So, then that’s very demotivating, because according to attribution theory, ability is uncontrollable. So, if you are performing poorly due to your low ability, then it’s unlikely to change in the future and it’s very discouraging.
But mindset research simply takes this one step forward by saying that, you know, not all of the students believe that their ability is fixed and uncontrollable. Some students might think of their ability as malleable and can be developed. So, for these group of students with a growth mindset of our ability, then saying that, you know, I performed poorly due to my ability may not be as discouraging. Because they believe that, you know, even though I’m not so good right now, I can still develop and get better the next time.
Katja
Ok. What about some like external attributes like, say, students believing that they are succeeding because the teacher is so good or the tasks are easy? Are they also related to growth mindset or fixed mindset?
Junlin
So, I think there is some research suggesting that if you have more of a fixed mindset then maybe you’re more likely to make ability attribution and attributions to these external uncontrollable factors, such as luck. But if you have more of a growth mindset, then you’re more likely to make internal attributions, and especially attributions towards effort, so you believe that you do well because you work hard. And that’s very beneficial motivationally because that’s something controllable and so you can always just work harder if you want to get better at something.
Katja
Yeah. And you also have done a lot of research on growth mindsets. Could you tell us more, what kind of research findings did you get?
Junlin
Yes. So, one strend of my research is looking at these individual differences in student’s mindset profiles, because I think we often talked about growth and fixed mindset as this binary dichotomous motivational system. So, if you have a growth mindset, then you set more learning goals, and if you have a fixed mindset, then you endorse more performance goals. So, there are these two groups of people. But in reality, I think people combine these factors in a more nuanced and complex ways. So, some of my research shows that there are these traditional group of students who combine their growth mindset with learning goals. But there are also some students with a growth mindset endorse both learning goals and performance goals. I think that’s often that might be a reflection of our school reality where we put so much emphasis on students ability and performance, so even growth mindset students feel concerned about their ability. And I also found some groups of students who endorse a fixed mindset but very low performance goals. So not all fixed mindset students are occupied with demonstrating their ability. Some of them simply just believe that, you know, they can’t do anything about their ability. So, they give up and do not even try to demonstrate their ability.
Katja
And is there some interventions we could design to help those students?
Junlin
Yes. So, for example, I’ve done some research looking at how teachers instructional practices might shape students mindset. So, in that study, we found that when teachers use more ability differentiated practices, for example, giving well performing students more challenging task and lower performing students easier task, that communicates a lower expectation and more of a fixed mindset message to the students, and students develop more of a fixed mindset. So, this is not necessarily saying that, you know, differentiation is bad, because oftentimes we need to adapt our instruction based on students learning and their backgrounds, but I think it’s very nuanced in the sense that, you know, teachers want to avoid publicly conveying these expectations. So, if they do it in a more private manner, then it might not have these, like negative effects.
And then, we also found that when teachers get students more autonomy, give them opportunity to independently think and solve some problems, that also helps students to develop a stronger growth mindset. So, it helps students to develop a sense of agency, so they are not simply being the passive recipient of knowledge from the teachers. It gives them that agency and agentic belief that they can develop their own ability.
Katja
And now you’re also starting some new research on growth mindset. Could you tell us more, what are you doing currently?
Junlin
Yeah, so this is linked to the mindset profiles I talked about earlier. So, together with some collaborators in the Netherlands, now I’m looking at how these mindset profiles develop over time. So, we followed a group of students from the first two years of their lower secondary school and found that in grade seven students with a growth mindset and learning goals are the biggest subgroups. But that in grade eight, so the second time point, students with the fixed mindset and disengaged profiles, they become the largest subgroup. So that’s very disencouraging and might have something to do with the context, because in the Netherlands students have these streaming and tracking. So students enter these different tracks, some help them to progress towards university and some help them to enter vocational school. So this kind of tracking practices might have some impact on their mindset development.
And I’m also now looking at these distinct mindset trajectories here in Finland. So, we look at a group of lower secondary school students from Grade 7 to grade 9. And we found that if we just focus on the average change, there is no change in students growth mindset. But when you focus on the average, you really miss out on those subgroups. So, when we look at these heterogeneous growth mindset development, then we also identify students with low increasing growth mindset and high decreasing growth mindset. So, now the next step is to really think about who are these students, and why are they more at risk of developing a high decreasing growth mindset, and what are some protective factors that can help them maintain their growth mindset.
Katja
Yes, that’s very interesting and I would love to hear more in the future.
And then, so, you are an expert in the field of growth mindsets and you know the research literature pretty well, and I wanted to ask you, what are the research gaps there, like what we should still look into more? What kind of things they have to know more about growth mindsets, and how to develop them and how to support students and anybody who is suffering from too low perceptions or beliefs about themselves?
Junlin
So, I think, like you said, for a very long time we focus on students mindset as this individual difference variable, and we know a lot about the impact or consequences of having a growth versus a fixed mindset. But only very recently we started to take this contextual or ecological approach to understand, you know, mindset is not just something reside within the individual. It’s a product of the learning environment or the learning context. So, I think there’s a lot of work to be done to really understand what kind of teaching practices or parenting practices, that might promote or undermine children’s growth or their growth mindset.
Katja
Hmm. And then, is there any knowledge on that already? Some of the listeners might be future teachers or they might be parents. What do you think, how could they help children and students to develop growth mindset?
Junlin
Yes. So, I think there is now a lot of evidence pointing towards the importance of autonomy. So, earlier I mentioned that when teachers use more autonomy supportive practices, students tend to report a stronger growth mindset. And there is research on parents showing similar findings. So, they show that if you are a helicopter parent who’s like hovering above your children and very controlling, trying to make decisions for your child, then children tend to report a stronger fixed mindset. But if you are more autonomy supportive parent and give opportunities for your child to make their own decisions, then students or children also tend to see themselves as an agent who are able to develop their own ability and intelligence.
And there are also research showing that parents and teachers mindset about failure matters. So, failure mindset means that how you view failure or mistakes. So, when teachers and parents believe that failure and mistakes are bad and demotivating for children, then children tend to develop more of a fixed mindset. But when teachers and parents believe that, you know, errors and mistakes are just part of the learning process, a very natural part of the learning process, and then students tend to develop a stronger growth mindset.
Katja
So, it’s kind of like giving a little bit more flexibility or being more flexible, like giving autonomy for children will help them to create better.
Junlin
Yes, absolutely.
Katja
And thank you, thank you so much for this interview, Doctor Yu!
Junlin
Thank you for having me!
Katja
And thank you for all the listeners of the Educational Psychology for Everyone -podcast. See you next time!
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