Dina Gohar
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

People with a growth mindset—the belief that intelligence and other abilities can develop through effort—enjoy numerous benefits inside and outside of the classroom (Dweck, 2006, 2017). For example, students with a growth mindset are more likely to persist when challenged and to succeed in college with higher grades and course completion rates (Yaeger at al., 2019), and even enjoy greater well-being overall (Tao et al., 2022). A growth mindset can be particularly beneficial for students from historically underrepresented or marginalized groups who are likely to face systemic barriers, such as those related to race, socioeconomic status (SES), or first-generation status (Fink et al., 2018). Such students often encounter additional hurdles that can impact their educational journey, from stereotypes to limited resources, which a growth mindset can help them be resilient enough to overcome. For example, an online intervention encouraging high school students to view intellectual abilities as capable of growth through effort, new strategies, and seeking help significantly improved grades among lower-achieving students, especially when the school environment aligned with the growth mindset message (Yaeger et al., 2019).

However, a growth mindset is NOT a panacea, and not having one is far from the only reason why marginalized students may struggle academically. Overemphasis on individual effort might obscure structural and systemic factors that impact student success, such as discrimination and limited resources. Although many studies suggest that those who are marginalized or from low SES may benefit most from adopting a growth mindset, some studies suggest the opposite (Sisk et al., 2018). For example, Bernardo (2020) found that a growth mindset was positively related to learning outcomes only among higher SES students, highlighting the importance of social resources supporting students’ efforts to improve for the benefits of their growth mindset to be realized. How do we ensure these interventions are successful for the students who stand to benefit from them the most?

Growth mindset interventions can sometimes backfire for disadvantaged students if not implemented carefully enough to avoid encouraging self-blame or shame for failure. As Hoyt and Burnette’s (2020) “double-edged sword model” highlights, growth mindset messaging can not only yield positive outcomes due to increased self-efficacy (and reduced social essentialism), but also indirectly predict adverse outcomes due to more self-blame and adopting personal responsibility for problems. Therefore, in stigmatizing contexts and in isolation, differentiating responsibility for a problem from expectations for potentially managing the problem is integral for positive growth mindset-related outcomes. For instance, frame marginalized students’ academic difficulties within broader societal contexts. Instead of saying "Your grade is a result of your effort,” you could say “Your grade reflects your current performance, which can be negatively impacted by systemic inequalities that we can hopefully address together.” Rather than saying “if you work harder, you will improve,” acknowledge that “improvement often requires both effort and support. Let's explore the resources available to you, such as tutoring services, my office hours, and study groups, that can complement your hard work so it is reflected in your final grade.”

In addition to promoting a growth mindset in our students without encouraging self-blame or false hope, we should discuss and actively address systemic barriers that can affect their performance to the best of our ability. We can truly empower our students by providing the resources they need to reap the benefits of a growth mindset while advocating for structural changes that support all students.

Your Course Syllabus Can Cultivate A Growth Mindset

As educators, we have the power to cultivate a growth mindset in our students without encouraging self-blame for failure, which can facilitate their resilience and success. How can we do so through small changes in our classes so that we don’t burn ourselves out? My online experiment (N = 200) suggests that an easy way to cultivate a growth mindset in the classroom, whether online or in person, is through our course syllabus as the first point of contact with our students. Compared to those randomly assigned to read a conventional syllabus, students who read a growth mindset-based syllabus scored significantly higher on Dweck’s Growth Mindset Scale afterward (Gohar, 2024). Moreover, students perceived a typically dreaded Research Methods course and its instructor more positively if the syllabus was growth-mindset oriented, much like students perceive a course and its instructor more positively if the syllabus is detailed (Saville et al., 2010), learner-centered (Richmond et al., 2016), inclusive (Fuentes et al., 2020), and warm in tone (Gurung & Galardi, 2021). More specifically, students reported more desire to take and less anxiety about a growth-mindset based course, which was perceived as less challenging, too. This was especially the case for students who identified as female or lower income, who even expected higher grades in the growth-mindset based course–perhaps helping to mitigate stereotype threat. Students also perceived the growth-mindset based instructor as more qualified, reasonable, and nice, which is an added bonus.

So, what does a growth-mindset based syllabus look like? Using language that emphasizes the potential for growth when describing your learning outcomes (e.g., “grow in your ability to think critically”), assignments, and course (e.g., “This course is challenging, but I truly believe that every student is capable of succeeding with enough effort and persistence, and it is my job to help everyone do well!”). I even include an explicit message that, “studies suggest that the more you challenge yourself to learn, the more your brain actually grows! So, even difficult things like learning how to do research and statistics get easier as you get smarter over time,” which I highly recommend doing at least for research methods and statistics courses that can cause math anxiety and stereotype threat (Luo & Chen, 2024).

It is not enough to use growth mindset facilitating language in your syllabus, though. Your course design needs to reflect growth mindset practices to show students that you really mean it. it can be hard for students to adopt and sustain a growth mindset if they don’t have the chance to make mistakes without hurting their final grades. Therefore, it is critical to use recursive assessment and grading that actually rewards students’ effort and improvement as well as their performance whenever possible. For example, students can earn an “effort score” that is incorporated into their final grades on assignments, as described in the figure below.

Click here for a link to a copy of the post with figures.

If you want to make sure that your students actually read the Syllabus that you put so much time into, at the beginning of the course, you can have them annotate the syllabus with their questions or comments as a graded assignment, which I highly recommend.

More Tips for Cultivating a Growth Mindset in Your Students

How else can you help your students develop a growth mindset to reap the benefits while avoiding potential pitfalls? First, if you tend to believe that ability is fixed (you can find out by taking the short linked Mindset Quiz), work on cultivating more of a growth mindset yourself because your mindset can impact your students’ mindset and thus their performance. For example, STEM faculty with a fixed mindset inspire less student motivation and have larger racial achievement gaps in their classes (Canning et al., 2019). For maximal benefit, students’ growth mindsets must also be supported by their teacher’s own growth mindsets (Yaeger et al., 2022), and ideally, peer norms, which can be influenced by teachers. Model a growth mindset for your students by sharing your mistakes and struggles and how you learned from or overcame them for inspiration.

Second, praising effort and process, rather than performance or ability, can effectively foster a growth mindset and improve student performance, especially after setbacks (Mueller & Dweck, 1998). For example, instead of saying things like "you're a really great writer,” say something like "I can tell you put a lot of thought into this paper." Rather than just praising students for performing well, thank them for the hard work they put into the assignment, highlighting the connection between invested effort and improved performance if relevant. Third, it can be helpful to normalize struggle and “failure” as part of learning and emphasize the opportunity for growth, especially in the face of adversity, which can even facilitate post-traumatic growth beyond pre-trauma levels (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004). Simply reminding students that “everyone makes mistakes” can go a long way to normalize them. However, remember to acknowledge the barriers faced by disadvantaged students to prevent them from blaming themselves for struggling and work to address those barriers whenever possible.

Fourth, help your students develop self-compassion, especially if they tend to be overly self-critical when they make mistakes. Neff’s website, selfcompassion.org, has great free exercises for cultivating more self-compassion. Encourage your students to review their mistakes in a nonjudgemental fashion and to learn from them by rewarding their doing so. Fifth, students can be instructed to say “stop” and breathe when their fixed mindset voice is getting out of hand and to add “yet” to the end of their fixed mindset statements to reap the benefits (e.g., “I can’t do this… YET!”). Finally, remember that a growth mindset isn’t about having “positive thoughts only” but about embracing challenges and learning from our mistakes because we believe in our capacity to improve.

Best of luck as you carefully nurture a growth mindset in your students and empower them to achieve success inside and outside of the classroom as lifelong learners!

References

Bernardo, A. B. I. (2020). Social dominance goals, perceived socioeconomic status, and the academic achievement of Filipino students. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 50(5), 269-282.

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(2), eaau4734. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aau4734

Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House.

Dweck, C. (2014, November). The power of believing that you can improve [Video]. TED Conferences.

Dweck C.S. (2017). Mindset: Changing the Way You Think to Fulfill Your Potential . Little Brown Book Group.

Fink, A., Cahill, M. J., McDaniel, M. A., Hoffman, A., & Frey, R. F. (2018). Improving general chemistry performance through a growth mindset intervention: Selective effects on underrepresented minorities. Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 19(3), 783-806. https://doi.org/10.1039/C7RP00244K

Fuentes, M. A., Zelaya, D. G., & Madsen, J. W. (2020). Rethinking the course syllabus: Considerations for promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion. Teaching of Psychology, 48(1), 69-79.

Gohar, D. (2024). A growth mindset-based syllabus improves students’ perceptions of taking and succeeding in research methods. Manuscript in preparation.

Gurung, R. A. R., & Galardi, N. R. (2021). Syllabus tone, more than mental health statements, influence intentions to seek help. Teaching of Psychology, 49(1), 32-37.

Hoyt, C. L., & Burnette, J. L. (2020). Growth mindset messaging in stigma-relevant contexts: A double-edged sword? Journal of Social Issues, 76(3), 645-667.

Luo, Y., & Chen, X. (2024). The impact of math-gender stereotypes on students' academic performance: Evidence from China. Journal of Intelligence, 12(8), 75. https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence12080075

Mueller, C. M., & Dweck, C. S. (1998). Praise for intelligence can undermine children's motivation and performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(1), 33-52.

Richmond, A. S., Slattery, J. M., Mitchell, N., Morgan, R. K., & Becknell, J. (2016). Can a learner-centered syllabus change students' perceptions of student–professor rapport and master teacher behaviors? Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 2(3), 159-168.

Saville, B. K., Zinn, T. E., Brown, A. R., & Marchuk, K. A. (2010). Syllabus detail and students' perceptions of teacher effectiveness. Teaching of Psychology, 37(3), 186-189.

Sisk, V. F., Burgoyne, A. P., Sun, J., Butler, J. L., & Macnamara, B. N. (2018). To what extent and under which circumstances are growth mind-sets important to academic achievement? Two meta-analyses. Psychological Science, 29(4), 549-571.

Tao, V. Y. K., Li, Y., & Wu, A. M. S. (2022). Growth mindset and psychological well-being: The mediating role of personal growth initiative and self-efficacy. Journal of Happiness Studies, 23(3), 1187-1203.

Tedeschi, R. G., & Calhoun, L. G. (2004). Posttraumatic growth: Conceptual foundations and empirical evidence. Psychological Inquiry, 15(1), 1-18.

Yeager, D. S., Carroll, J. M., Buontempo, J., Cimpian, A., Woody, S., Crosnoe, R., ... & Dweck, C. S. (2022). Teacher mindsets help explain where a growth-mindset intervention does and doesn't work. Psychological Science, 33(1), 18-32.

Yeager, D. S., Hanselman, P., Walton, G. M., Murray, J. S., Crosnoe, R., Muller, C., ... & Dweck, C. S. (2019). A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement. Nature, 573(7774), 364-369.