Students’ school environments can affect their academic mindset—whether they believe intelligence and other skills are fixed or can be improved through effort—and that mindset affects how they react to future school environments, creating a feedback loop.
That is one of the just-published, early takeaways from a interdisciplinary research project begun in 2016 by the Mindset Scholars Network, which involves 14 separate research studies, some of them longitudinal, on the ways that “educators, school systems, and structures can convey messages to students that they belong and are valued at school.”
The group also reported that early studies suggest researchers and educators should think broadly about what they consider a school environment, noting that aspects from teachers’ speech to students’ home life may influence a student’s approach to learning. Six of the studies have been completed; results of the other eight are expected late this year.
