Thursday, April 11, 2019

2019 NATIONAL REPORT Maximizing the Relationship Between Mindset and Student Success



 
New findings from the Center for Community College Student Engagement(CCCSE) indicate that mindset may play an important role in student engagement. Students who have more productive mindsets are more engaged and have higher GPAs. Thus, understanding mindset—and helping students improve their academic mindsets—may open new avenues for improving student success. 

While there is a great deal of research about mindset and its impact on the way people learn, little work has been done on mindset in community colleges. Yet mindset is beginning to get traction in the field, primarily at colleges that are implementing guided pathways. This report provides results from the first large set of data on mindset in community colleges. These data suggest that understanding the relationship between mindset and success can give colleges new tools to help students meet their academic goals. 

The Center presents these findings in the hope that they provide insights at this emergent time of mindset work.  

What Is Academic Mindset?  

Academic mindset encompasses individuals’ beliefs about the ways learning and intelligence work. These beliefs frame students’ thinking, influence how they interpret events, and ultimately affect their success. Students with productive academic mindsets believe, for example, that they can change their intelligence, and they have confidence in their ability to learn challenging material and accomplish difficult tasks. “When students believe they can get smarter, they understand that effort makes them stronger. Therefore they put in extra time and effort, and that leads to higher achievement.” 

By contrast, students with nonproductive academic mindsets are more likely to “stop trying when confronted with a challenge because they’ve convinced themselves that they’re not good at math or writing or whatever the subject is.” 2 Based on research developed around these concepts, a growing number of colleges are incorporating mindset—in particular, exploring ways to help students move toward a more productive academic mindset— into their efforts to improve student success.  

Components of Academic Mindset

The Center identified four components of academic mindset and surveyed students about each of them. Based on their responses, students were placed along a scale from a nonproductive to a productive mindset. For example, agreeing or strongly agreeing with statements such as “I can become more intelligent by working hard on my studies” indicates a productive mindset. The four components of academic mindset explored in this report are: 

  • 1. Growth vs. fixed mindset: students’ perceptions of the potential for change in their intelligence. 
  • 2. Self-efficacy: students’ confidence in their ability to be successful in their coursework. 
  • 3. Relevance of academic experience: students’ views of whether their college work is preparing them for future success. 
  • 4. Sense of belonging: students’ perceptions of whether they are accepted members of their college community. 

These four components are interconnected, so colleges’ efforts to influence one component may have an impact on another. Even with the overlapping nature of these components, however, there is value in exploring each one individually. Most community colleges have not implemented direct efforts to influence the first two components, growth vs. fixed mindset and self-efficacy, so the steepest learning 

 ACADEMIC MINDSET  

Growth vs. Fixed Mindset Self- Efficacy 

Sense of Belonging Relevance of Academic Experience curve may be in these areas. However, existing efforts at many colleges already address the third and fourth components. Making sure students’ academic experiences are relevant is central to guided pathways, and maximizing students’ sense of belonging is a key part of engagement efforts. In fact, more than 15 years of Center data show that building relationships is central to student success, in part because relationships foster students’ sense of belonging at college. But even with a strong head start in these areas, looking at these components through a mindset lens may help colleges better serve their students.  

Contradictory Beliefs Point to Opportunities for Improvement  

Center findings indicate that few students have fully productive or fully nonproductive mindsets. Most students have at least partially productive or mixed mindsets; their responses fall toward the productive end of the scale for at least some components of mindset. 

It is noteworthy that student responses that indicate a nonproductive mindset tend to cluster in two areas: testing and math. Students report that in general they believe they can learn new things, but their responses consistently indicate a less productive mindset when responding to survey items specifically about test-taking and math. These data mirror statements such as “I don’t test well” and “I’m not a math person” that are often heard in student focus groups. These findings indicate that colleges have an opportunity to reframe students’ perspectives on learning and that the greatest dividends may come from focusing on mindsets related to testing and performance in math.  

 Having a productive mindset correlates with higher levels of engagement, and this finding holds true across all CCSSE benchmarks. The closer students are to a productive mindset, the more likely they are to be highly engaged and, thus, more successful. 

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