R3 2.14 September 5, 2024 Mindset Messaging for First-Generation STEM Students
When constructed and timed in just the right way, emails from an instructor can shrink disparities and raise performance in challenging foundational science courses.
This is an interesting time of year to be working on one’s teaching, for those on the traditional U.S. academic calendar. The new-school-year energy is great fuel for the effort, and there are also the new ideas sparked by summer reading, workshops, and the like. Then again, the major components of our courses are probably already in place, syllabi are written, and for some, class meetings have begun.
But even with objectives formalized, LMS shells updated, and deadlines set, there are still new things we can try after the semester gets rolling. One thing I keep coming back to, and one that doesn’t take a syllabus rewrite to incorporate, is how to tackle course objectives from the same side as your students. When we interact with students, we can strive to do so using non-adversarial, kind pedagogy. I think this approach is turning into a powerful new trend in college teaching, one that pushes us to examine old assumptions about our students and about the best ways to help motivate people to learn. (If you’d like to hear a conversation on the same-side philosophy plus a few other things that have been on my mind lately, check out this episode of the Faculty Approachability Project interview series.)
That motivation factor brings us to this issue’s focus article, a new piece in a line of research on applications of mindset theory. In it, the authors test out some ways of conveying mindset messages at critical points within a foundational STEM course - the exact type of class that can make or break a student’s progression toward a degree and career path.
Citation:
Canning, E. A., White, M., & Davis, W. B. (2024). Growth mindset messages from instructors improve academic performance among first-generation college students. CBE Life Sciences Education, 23(2), 1–9.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.23-07-0131
Paywall or Open:
Open
Summary:
Researchers examined the impact of growth mindset messages from instructors on the academic performance of first-generation college students in an introductory biology course. It employed a randomized design where all students received either growth mindset-based messages or control messages via email after their first two exams. Results revealed that growth mindset messages not only enhanced overall student grades, compared to control messages, but were particularly beneficial for first-generation students.
Research Questions:
Does receiving growth mindset messages from instructors affect the academic performance of students, particularly first-generation college students?
Can growth mindset communications increase student engagement with course materials, as reflected in their online activity?
Sample:
417 undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory biology course at a public university in the Pacific Northwest.
Method/Design:
Students enrolled in the course were randomly assigned to receive either growth mindset or control messages immediately following the first two exams of the semester. Instructors were unaware of which messages specific students were receiving. These emails emphasized the malleability of intelligence and encouraged effective study strategies. The study measured the impact of these messages on students' subsequent exam scores and final course grades, as well as their engagement with the course website.
A number of demographic variables were measured, along with a measure of overall mindset beliefs prior to the intervention, and self-reported current college GPA. These variables were used as covariates in the analyses, with particular attention to first-generation and underrepresented minority (URM) status. However, the final study sample lacked a large enough proportion of URM students to adequately power any subsequent analyses.
Key Findings:
Students who received growth mindset messages showed improved academic performance compared to those who received control messages, with a more pronounced effect among first-generation students.
In the control condition, continuing-generation students outperformed first-generation students on the last exam by over a full letter grade, but this difference disappeared in the growth mindset condition. Similarly, with respect to overall course grade, first-generation performance rose to the level achieved by continuing-generation students in the growth mindset condition.
The intervention had a significant effect on exam scores, but this difference did not emerge until the third exam, suggesting a cumulative effect of messages over time.
Growth mindset messages increased student interactions with course materials online, suggesting increased engagement.
While the intervention improved engagement and performance, it did not significantly alter how often students checked their grades, indicating that the intervention's effects were focused on learning behaviors rather than on checking grades per se.
Choice Quote from the Article:
Nationwide, FG [first-generation college] students represent a large pool of potential scientists, engineers, and mathematicians. To provide the most equitable learning environment for these individuals, and to maximize the number of FG students that are retained in scientific fields, it is imperative that we find new and better ways of supporting FG students. Most of the current solutions involve resource-intensive, large-scale institutional transformation that consists of additional advising or freshman seminar courses that teach FG students how to navigate college. In addition to these structural solutions, we propose that by using “wise” intervention techniques, faculty can fairly easily communicate growth mindset messages at critical time points.
Why it Matters:
This study followed the gold-standard, randomized-control group design that lets researchers confidently conclude that the observed results really did result directly from the intervention (and not, say, unknown third factors, self-selection into resource or study groups, or other confounds). It also revealed some interesting facets of how mindset messaging works, especially its disproportionate impact on first-generation students and also that this messaging takes time to build up over the course of a semester. I think the findings reinforce an important point, similar to some other recent research: the timing of study strategy interventions, and not just the content, is critical.
I also appreciated the helpful and detailed explanation of how the mindset messages were constructed and exactly what aspects of mindset theory they were designed to tap into. Mindset has been an incredibly powerful framework for exploring and increasing academic motivation, but it’s also easy to over-simplify. There’s a lot more to it than, for example, being generally encouraging or telling students to be optimistic about their potential, and so I was glad to see this precision of thought and explanation in the article. The three major aspects of mindset the researchers focused on were as follows: 1) abilities can be improved, 2) academic struggles are normal to experience, and 3) academic struggles are the result of controllable rather than uncontrollable factors. The communications in question were crafted around those three core aspects of academic mindset; for those seeking to do something similar, I think that even if you don’t use the identical wording as the article,’s intervention messages, you can’t go wrong if you build your own version around those three key concepts.
Most Relevant For:
Faculty teaching in STEM or health professions; faculty, staff, and leaders involved with inclusive course design, diversity, and equity; staff leading student success and academic persistence programs; researchers and leaders involved in advancing success for first-generation students
Limitations, Caveats, and Nagging Questions:
The study procedure was carried out right around the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the class in question was fully online for that reason. The exams were fully online as well and were proctored through webcam observations. I can’t think of a reason why this would have affected responses to the messaging, but it’s worth noting as part of the full picture of the course and setting.
Another nuance to keep in mind is that the intervention was built not just on “classic” mindset theory, but also on the concept of light-touch/wise intervention strategies. Per the article, “Wise interventions are designed to promote recursive change through the reconstrual of ambiguous contextual messages and have been shown to be particularly effective for [first-generation] students.” This explanation might seem a bit opaque, but the article goes on to offer some helpful concrete examples. Poor exam grades, e.g., are ambiguous in the sense that they might be a signal to a student that it’s time to seek out additional help, or they might seem to mean that the student in question lacks the potential to succeed in college. Wise interventions target this moment of interpretation, steering students toward the former type (help, effort and so on are needed) and away from the latter (you don’t have what it takes to be successful here).
Lastly, I noticed that the intervention email also conveyed five learning strategies that the authors suggested, based on prior student feedback: study daily rather than cramming, study with a group, create concept maps, identify information gaps instead of rereading/rewriting notes, revisit lecture recordings to clarify unclear material. I’m not sure I would have chosen those exact five strategies, but they’re reasonably well grounded in learning science research and theory. I do think it would be interesting to know how much of the effect was due to the mindset intervention itself, and how much to the suggested resources, along with how many students actually pursued those different approaches as a function of seeing the messages.
If you liked this article, you might also appreciate:
Canning, E. A., & Limeri, L. B. (2023). Theoretical and methodological directions in mindset intervention research. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 17, e12758. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12758
Canning, E. A., Muenks, K., Green, D. J., & Murphy, M. C. (2019). STEM faculty who believe ability is fixed have larger racial achievement gaps and inspire less student motivation in their classes. Science Advances, 5, 1–7.
Canning, E. A., Ozier, E., Williams, H., AlRasheed, R., & Murphy, M. C. (2022). Professors who signal a fixed mindset about ability undermine women’s performance in STEM. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 13, 927–937.
Oh, H., Patrick, H., Kilday, J., & Ryan, A. (2023). The need for relatedness in college engineering: A self-determination lens on academic help seeking. Journal of Educational Psychology, 116(3), 426–447. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000831
Schwartz, S. E. O., Kanchewa, S. S., Rhodes, J. E., Gowdy, G., Stark, A. M., Paul, J., & Parnes, M. (2018). “I’m having a little struggle with this, can you help me out?” : Examining impacts and processes of a social capital intervention for first-generation college students, American Journal of Community Psychology, 61, 166–178. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajcp.12206
Thompson, R. J., Schmid, L., Mburi, M., Dowd, J. E., Finkenstaedt-Quinn, S. A., Shultz, G. V., … Reynolds, J. A. (2023). Diversity of undergraduates in STEM courses: Individual and demographic differences in changes in self-efficacy, epistemic beliefs, and intrapersonal attribute profiles. Studies in Higher Education, (September). https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2250385
Tripp, B., Cozzens, S., Hrycyk, C., Tanner, K. D., & Schinske, J. N. (2024). Content coverage as a persistent exclusionary practice: Investigating perspectives of health professionals on the influence of undergraduate coursework. CBE Life Sciences Education, 23(1), ar5. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.23-05-0074
Yeager, D. S., Walton, G. M., Brady, S. T., Akcinar, E. N., Paunesku, D., Keane, L., ... & Dweck, C. S. (2016). Teaching a lay theory before college narrows achievement gaps at scale. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113, E3341–E3348.
File under:
Motivation, mindset, theories of intelligence, STEM teaching and learning, student success, first generation college students, DEI