Mind-Set Interventions Are a Scalable Treatment for Academic Underachievement

TLDR

Academic‑mind‑set interventions have proven effective in small, in‑person, single‑school studies, and this work considers their broader implications for theory‑to‑practice pipelines and education reform. The study aims to determine whether scalable online growth‑mind‑set and sense‑of‑purpose interventions can raise achievement, especially for students who struggle academically. Brief growth‑mind‑set and sense‑of‑purpose modules were delivered online to 1,594 students across 13 diverse high schools. For students at risk of dropping out, each intervention increased semester GPA in core courses and improved satisfactory performance rates by 6.4 percentage points.

Abstract

The efficacy of academic-mind-set interventions has been demonstrated by small-scale, proof-of-concept interventions, generally delivered in person in one school at a time. Whether this approach could be a practical way to raise school achievement on a large scale remains unknown. We therefore delivered brief growth-mind-set and sense-of-purpose interventions through online modules to 1,594 students in 13 geographically diverse high schools. Both interventions were intended to help students persist when they experienced academic difficulty; thus, both were predicted to be most beneficial for poorly performing students. This was the case. Among students at risk of dropping out of high school (one third of the sample), each intervention raised students’ semester grade point averages in core academic courses and increased the rate at which students performed satisfactorily in core courses by 6.4 percentage points. We discuss implications for the pipeline from theory to practice and for education reform.