Executive Summary

December 2016

Education Research at Scale

Empowering community colleges to improve student outcomes by applying research based practices

2 PERTS, Stanford University – www.perts.net – contact@perts.net

‘Learning Mindsets’ is a broad term used to describe different beliefs and attitudes that shape motivation and learning (Farrington et al., 2012). Mindsets act as “lenses” that shape how students interpret the meaning of everyday events: for example, interpreting a disappointing grade as evidence of low innate ability versus as evidence that new strategies and increased effort are needed, or interpreting tedious school work as pointless versus useful for reaching purposeful lifetime goals. These interpretations, in turn, influence the degree to which students engage in opportunities to learn and grow (Dweck & Leggett, 1988; Mangels, Butterfield, Lamb, Good, & Dweck, 2006; Yeager & Walton, 2011).

The 64% of American adults who hold no postsecondary degree or certificate face harsh economic prospects (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012). They are unemployed at two times the rate of college graduates and earn $21,000 less in median earnings per year (Baum, Ma, & Payea, 2013). Community colleges serve as critical entry-points to higher education and to higher-paying jobs, especially for low income, first-generation, and minority students, who are more likely to attend such programs than four-year colleges (Bailey & Alfonso, 2005; Baum, Ma, & Payea, 2010; Horn & Nevill, 2006; Kolesnikova, 2009; Mullin, 2012). However, only 23% of students who start at community college earn an associate’s degree or transfer to a 4-year college within 6 years (ACT, 2012). Many of these students have experienced a history of academic failure (Bailey, Jeong, & Cho, 2010; Grubb, 2010; Levin & Calcagno, 2008; Silva & White, 2013). Consequently, while they may start hopeful, they often shut down when they encounter challenging classes because they conclude they don’t have what it takes to succeed (Adelman, 2006; Lesgold & Welch-Ross, 2012; Mery, 2011; Yeager et al., 2013). This executive summary provides an introduction to our work with community college partners and leading mindset researchers to address this problem by helping students adopt more positive beliefs. We provide a brief introduction to what learning mindsets are and evidence for why they matter. We conclude with research results from our work with community colleges and describe how you can find out more about bringing scientifically validated mindset programs to your campuses.

Overview

About PERTS PERTS, which stands for the Project for Education Research That Scales, is an applied research center at Stanford University. We work with education organizations and researchers around the country to identify, evaluate, and propagate scalable practices that support students to engage fully in learning so that they can develop into successful young adults. Our mission is to improve the equity of learning outcomes by bridging the gap between cutting-edge research and effective implementation practices. We accomplish this through three integrated core activities: 1) translating research into practice, 2) collaborating with education partners to enable continuous improvement of practices designed to improve student outcomes, and 3) driving large-scale adoption of effective practices. We believe that properly scaling educational research can empower schools and colleges to reduce inequity and create better experiences for both students and educators.

Learning Mindsets: A Brief Introduction

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One of the most exciting areas of our research is in helping students adopt a growth mindset. People sometimes think of intelligence as being like eye color—something fixed that can’t really be changed. We call this belief a “fixed mindset.” Research shows that when students think in a fixed mindset, they tend to respond to academic challenges and setbacks by saying “I’m not smart enough to do this,” or “this subject just isn’t for me” (Dweck, 2000). After all, if intelligence can’t really be changed, what’s the point of working hard in a subject that doesn’t come naturally? The opposite of a fixed mindset is a growth mindset. A growth mindset means understanding that intelligence is more like muscle strength—you can increase it through effort, good study strategies, and seeking out challenges. When students think in a growth mindset, they tend to be motivated and engaged learners who respond to challenges and setbacks with increased interest and effort, and they tend to do better academically over time. They know their hard work will pay off, even in subjects that may not come easily at first (Dweck, 2000; Dweck & Leggett, 1988). A recent study that examined the entire 10th grade population of Chile (N = 168,000) showed that having a growth mindset may even buffer against the negative effects of poverty (Claro, Paunesku, & Dweck, 2016):

1. Students with a fixed mindset were 4x more likely to score in the bottom 5th of standardized test scores, while students with a growth mindset were 3x more likely to score in the top 5th.

2. Students in the bottom 10% of family income with a growth mindset were performing as well as students in the 80th-95th percentile of family income with a fixed mindset.

Growth Mindset and Achievement

Figure 1. Average standardized mathematics and language test scores for students with growth and fixed mindsets by

family income decile. (a) shows language scores, and (b) shows mathematics scores. Dashed lines represent students

with growth mindset, and solid lines represent students with fixed mindset. For clarity, only fixed mindset and growth

mindset (not mixed mindset) students are included. However, we note that mixed mindset students consistently fell in

between the two other groups. The green arrows indicate equivalence in performance between growth mindset

students in the bottom decile and fixed mindset students above the 9th decile in language, and fixed mindset

students above the 7th decile in math. Figure from Claro, Paunesku & Dweck, 2016, Proceedings of the National

Academy of Sciences.

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Negative beliefs about their intellectual abilities can be especially pervasive among Community College students, who often have a history of struggling academically (Bailey, Jeong, & Cho, 2010; Grubb, 2010; Levin & Calcagno, 2008; Silva & White, 2013). Such students are especially vulnerable to the negative effects of thinking in a fixed mindset.

The good news is that beliefs about intelligence are, themselves, malleable. We can teach students to adopt a growth mindset by educating them about the neuroscience of learning (Aronson, Fried, & Good, 2002; Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007; Paunesku et al., 2015). To help students develop a growth mindset we brought together experts in motivation research Carol Dweck and Greg Walton to create a brief, online program that teaches students the truth about intelligence: that the brain is actually quite malleable, and that anyone can get smarter. This program has been tested extensively in multiple randomized controlled trials and shown to improve student outcomes (Paunesku et al., 2015).

Growth Mindset Program Results

This program has led to:

• 4% point increase in continuous full-time enrollment after a semester among minority and first-generation college students when tested in a 4-year college.

• 5% point increase in students who transferred, graduated, or remained enrolled after 2 years when tested in community colleges.

Teaching Community College Students a Growth Mindset

Figure 2. Percent of students who graduated,

transferred, or remained enrolled in the two years

following their participation in a control activity or the

growth mindset program.

Figure 3. A sample page from the PERTS online growth mindset program for college students. On this page,

students learn about the neuroscience of what happens in the brain when you learn new things – that your neurons

form new connections that get stronger and faster the more you practices.

5 PERTS, Stanford University – www.perts.net – contact@perts.net

Since 2010, we have been studying how postsecondary institutions can implement this growth mindset program effectively. Now we are working with administrators at access-oriented colleges around the United States who want to put this program into action on their own campuses. Our goal since the beginning has been to develop systems for more effective collaborations between practitioners and researchers. We work tirelessly to simplify implementation, gather input from educators on how to improve our programs so that they are meeting educators’ needs, and to share results that are timely, useful, and context specific. In the fall of 2017 the most recent version of this program—currently free of charge— will be available to community colleges across the country. Below is a brief description of what participation involves:

● One online module that takes students less than 30 minutes to complete. The module includes survey questions, short reading passages, and brief writing reflection exercises.

● The program is administered in a new student orientation or first year experience course.

● Colleges will receive reports to see how many students completed the program and what impact it had on their mindsets.

Read More About the Research

● Read published research articles about our work to advance mindset science at perts.net/research. ● Read about PERTS and mindset programs in the New York Times article Conquering the Freshman

Fear of Failure.

● Get more background about mindsets from the Mindset Scholars Network website.

How Colleges Can Get Involved

“Ivy Tech Community College’s relationship with the PERTS started with our frustrations over the underlying challenges our students face. We had offered students active learning strategies inside the classroom and extensive academic support outside of it. Still we experienced too many capable students failing to attend class or not completing their assignments. When we learned about PERTS and their online program to help students learn more positive beliefs, it seemed like maybe that would help. From the beginning, PERTS listened to us and helped us design a way to fit the program perfectly within our student success course. All we had to do was follow directions and send student data to PERTS. The result was an quantifiable jump in student success, likely benefiting impacted students for a lifetime.”

Ronald Sloan Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs Richmond and East-Central Regions Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana

More information on participating will be available in early 2017

Sign up to receive updates by visiting perts.net/enrolling_colleges

https://www.perts.net/researchhttp://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/opinion/sunday/conquering-the-freshman-fear-of-failure.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/opinion/sunday/conquering-the-freshman-fear-of-failure.htmlhttp://mindsetscholarsnetwork.org/learning-mindsets/https://www.perts.net/enrolling_colleges

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ACT. (2012). National collegiate retention and persistence to degree rates. Retrieved from http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/pdf/retain 2012.pdf

Adelman, C. (2006). The toolbox revisited: Paths to degree completion from high school through college. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Oce of Vocational and Adult Education.

Aronson, J., Fried, C. B., & Good, C. (2002). Reducing the Effects of Stereotype Threat on African American College Students by Shaping Theories of Intelligence. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38(2), 113–125. https://doi.org/10.1006/jesp.2001.1491

Bailey, T. R., & Alfonso, M. (2005). Paths to persistence: An analysis of research on program e↵ectiveness at community colleges. In New Agenda Series, 6(1). Indianapolis, IN: Lumina Foundation for Education.

Bailey, T. R., Jeong, D. W., & Cho, S.-W. (2010). Referral, enrollment, and completion in developmental education sequences in community colleges. Economics of Education Review, 29(2), 255–270.

Baum, S., Ma, J., & Payea, K. (2013). Education pays 2013: The benefits of higher education for individuals and society. Trends in Higher Education Series, New York, NY.

Blackwell, L. S., Trzesniewski, K. H., & Dweck, C. S. (2007). Implicit Theories of Intelligence Predict Achievement Across an Adolescent Transition: A Longitudinal Study and an Intervention. Child Development, 78(1), 246–263. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007.00995.x

Claro, S., Paunesku, D., & Dweck, C. S. (2016). Growth mindset tempers the effects of poverty on academic achievement. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201608207. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1608207113

Dweck, C. S. (2000). Self-theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development. Psychology Press.

Dweck, C. S., & Leggett, E. L. (1988). A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality. Psychological Review, 95(2), 256. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.95.2.256

Farrington, C. A., Roderick, M., Allensworth, E., Nagaoka, J., Keyes, T. S., Johnson, D. W., & Beechum, N. O. (2012). Teaching Adolescents to Become Learners: The Role of Noncognitive Factors in Shaping School Performance--A Critical Literature Review. Consortium on Chicago School Research. Retrieved from http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED542543

Grubb, W. N. (2010, September). The quandaries of basic skills in community colleges: Views from the classroom (NCPR Working Paper). Paper presented at the National Center for Postsecondary Research developmental education conference, New York, NY.

Horn, L., & Nevill, S. (2006). Profile of undergraduates in U.S. postsecondary education institutions: 2003–04 with a special analysis of community college students (184th ed.) Washington, DC: U. S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics.

References

7 PERTS, Stanford University – www.perts.net – contact@perts.net

Kolesnikova, N. (2009). Community Colleges: A Route of Upward Economic Mobility (Community Development Report). Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Retrieved from www.stlouisfed.org/community development/assets/pdf/ CommunityColleges.pdf

Levin, H., & Calcagno, J. C. (2008). Remediation in the community college: An evaluator’s perspective. Community College Review, 35(3), 181–207.

Lesgold, A. M., & Welch-Ross, M. (Eds.). (2012). Improving adult literacy instruction: Options for practice and research. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

Mangels, J. A., Butterfield, B., Lamb, J., Good, C., & Dweck, C. S. (2006). Why do beliefs about intelligence influence learning success? A social cognitive neuroscience model. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 1(2), 75–86. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsl013

Mery, P. M. (2011). A mixed methods study of a statistics pathway for community college students placed into developmental mathematics. (Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation). San Francisco State University, CA.

Mullin, C. M. (2012). Why access matters: The community college student body (Policy Brief 2012-01PBL). Washington, DC: American Association of Community College.

Paunesku, D., Walton, G. M., Romero, C., Smith, E. N., Yeager, D. S., & Dweck, C. S. (2015). Mind-Set Interventions Are a Scalable Treatment for Academic Underachievement. Psychological Science, 26(6), 784–793. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615571017

Silva, E., & White, T. (2013). Pathways To Improvement: Using Psychological Strategies To Help College Students Master Developmental Math. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.carnegiefoundation .org/spotlight/productive-persistence-pathways-improvement

U. S. Census Bureau. (2012). American FactFinder: Selected social characteristics in the United States, 2008-2012 American community survey 5-year estimates. Retrieved April 09, 2014, from http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_12_5YR_DP02&prodType=table

Yeager, D. S., & Walton, G. M. (2011). Social-Psychological Interventions in Education They’re Not Magic. Review of Educational Research, 81(2), 267–301. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654311405999

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