Growth Mindset and Grit Pt 2: Intervention for Elementary School

Methodology

There are several things to consider when looking at the methodology of this intervention. My goal for this intervention would be to be able to assess all third through fifth-grade students in my school for zero cost. I would do this by using the computer labs and Google forms. I would need to partner with either the librarian or the computer teacher in the school to get every student to take the test during the school day. My intervention will consist of a pretest, posttest, six-week guidance lesson program, six-week small group lesson program, and interventions specifically designed for teachers.

The pretest and posttest will be comprised of the following twelve statements:

1. No matter how much intelligence you have you can always change it a good deal

2. You can learn new things, but you cannot change your basic level of intelligence

3. When I am very upset or angry, I can easily calm down.

4. I like my work best when it makes me think hard.

5. I like my work best when I can do it really well without too much trouble.

6. I like work that I'll learn from even if I make a lot of mistakes

7. I like my work best when I can do it perfectly without any mistakes

8. When something is hard it just makes me want to work on it more, not less

9. To tell the truth, when I work hard, it makes me feel as though I'm not very smart

10. I am able to stay very calm when things go wrong for me.

11. I am extremely sure I can complete all of the work assigned in class.

12. When I fail at an important goal, I am not likely to try again.

Scoring for Pretest and Posttest

I will then use a six-item Likert scale. The following answers for this Likert scale will be: disagree a lot, disagree, disagree a little, agree a little, agree, and agree a lot. The scoring for each of these answers will be from zero to five. A perfect growth mindset score on this assessment would be sixty. I would need to use reverse scoring on questions two, five, seven, nine, and twelve. To categorize the scores, individuals with the following ranges would fall into the following category for their mindset:

0 to 10 would have an extremely fixed mindset

11 to 20 would have a mostly fixed mindset

21 to 30 would have a somewhat fixed mindset

31 to 40 would somewhat have a growth mindset

41 to 50 would have mostly a growth mindset

51 to 60 would extremely have a growth mindset

When remembering the previously mentioned objective, using this test the goal would be for in the post-test, ninety percent of the students to have scores that fell in the thirty-one to sixty range. A more ambitious goal would be for seventy-five percent of those students to fall into the forty-one to sixty range. This test was pulled from MindsetWorks, and I also incorporated questions from Hamilton County’s screen of their elementary students (Assess Your Mindset 2015).

Small-Group Intervention

Using the data from the pretest, I would find the six most low-scoring individuals in each grade. I would then meet with those individuals, grouped by their grades, in a small group setting once a week. In this small group, I would do more direct interventions, psychoeducation, practices, and intentional work to help improve their growth mindset. In this group, one of the things I would have them do is write a journal about their academic pride experiences three times a week. They would have to journal one to three academic pride experiences a day or total (Cook, et al., 2017). I would use this method because it came out that students who participated in journaling about their pride experiences showed a positive correlation with cultivating a growth mindset.

Classroom Guidance Lessons

For the larger school community, I would do a three-lesson series on growth mindset spanned over six weeks. Using an AB model, I would see group A of third, fourth, and fifth grade one week, and week B the next, thus alternating classes each week. Lesson one would concern questions one, two, four, five, and nine. Lesson two would concern questions six, seven, eight, and twelve. Lesson three would cover questions three, ten, and eleven.

Lesson one would be psychoeducation about what the mindsets are, what is intelligence, and the difference between working hard and just being “born with it”. This lesson also incorporates the important concept of intrinsic motivation. By understanding intrinsic motivation as motivation from within, we can see where in questions for and five they are asking whether or not this student enjoys work that challenges them. Most students that lack intrinsic motivation will blame failure, slow processes, or lack of success on outside circumstances. However, a student who commits to believing that they are in control and can continue to learn, will have an improved growth mindset and also be more likely to be more academically successful (Ng, 2018).

After teaching students about growth mindset and intrinsic motivation, a natural segue would be teaching them the next practices better incorporated in these concepts period that is why lesson two would concern grit and resilience. This would also concern frustration tolerance because it would talk about being able to work on and sit in not knowing everything during certain lessons or content in the school. Lesson three would focus on emotional resilience, emotional regulation, and mindset approach to that in class. This lesson would also challenge students who potentially have already given up in a certain class before they even start.

Teaching Teachers Growth Mindset

In regards specifically to teachers cultivating a growth mindset, it has been found that one way to do this is to create intense experiences such as various team-building activities (Aytes & Bryant, 2019). Another is for teachers to use growth and process-focused language when praising a student (Boyett, 2019). An example of this would be “you worked very hard” rather than “you are smart”. Teachers can also have the role of psychoeducation that is involved in creating growth mindsets in students (Mancini & Zurawski, 2016). In the previously mentioned Australian study they found that although the teachers felt very strongly that growth mindset was important, 58% of them said they used mindset in their work, only 19% strongly agree that they were food at fostering a growth mindset in their students, and 14% strongly agreed they had adequate knowledge to teach children how to develop a growth mindset (Boylan, Barblett, & Knaus, 2018). So after the research is done on a growth mindset’s effects on academic success, teachers will need to be the first group who receive psychoeducation about the topic. I would propose to my principal to have time in staff development to teach teachers about growth mindset. I would teach the teachers about the different languages, discuss revolving around mindsets, and potential ways they can inspire a growth mindset in their classroom.

Assess Your Mindset. (2015). https://www.mindsetworks.com/.

Boyett, C. (2019). It’s All in the Mind. American Music Teacher, 68(6), 22–25.

Boylan, F., Barblett, L., & Knaus, M. (2018). Early childhood teachers’ perspectives of growth mindset: Developing agency in children. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 43(3), 16–24. https://doi.org/10.23965/AJEC.43.3.02

Bryant, S., & Aytes, K. (2019). Do Intense Work Experiences Influence Growth Mindset, Emotional Intelligence and Knowledge Creation and Sharing? Journal of Organizational Psychology, 19(4), 39–54. R

Cook, E. M., Wildschut, T., & Thomaes, S. (2017). Understanding adolescent shame and pride at school: Mindsets and perceptions of academic competence. Educational & Child Psychology, 34(3), 119–129.

Ng, B. (2018). The Neuroscience of Growth Mindset and Intrinsic Motivation. Brain Sciences (2076-3425), 8(2), 20. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci8020020

Zurawski, L., & Mancini, N. (2016). Engaging Your Growth Mindset for a Successful School Year. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups, 1(16), 91–98. https://doi.org/10.1044/persp1.SIG16.91