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Productive Persistence & the Student Mindset Intervention. Kevin Li and Mira Kolodkin FDW, Wright College August 14, 2014. Student Retention and Success. Underrepresented minority students and 1 st -generation college students are less likely to attain any post-secondary degree.
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Productive Persistence & the Student Mindset Intervention Kevin Li and Mira Kolodkin FDW, Wright College August 14, 2014
Student Retention and Success Underrepresented minority students and 1st-generation college students are less likely to attain any post-secondary degree. Working class/lower income students are less likely to attain any post-secondary degree. Our students are not aware of the factors that influence their performance and motivation
SAT Scores Same SAT Scores White African American, Hispanic, 1st gen, Women in science Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 www.nj.gov
? Non-Cognitive Skills Cognitive Skills
Why? • Home life and development • Families from low-socioeconomic communities are less likely to have the financial resources or time availability to provide children with academic support. • Culture. Not institutionalized. • Questions and Answers – Critical Thinking • Structure and Time Organization • “Unequal Childhoods” by Annette Lareau
Five Non-Cognitive Skills Motivation? Time? Don’t know how? Farrington et al., 2012
Grit • Grit is defined as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals.” [3] Building upon biographical collections of famous leaders in history, researchers and scientists have reached similar conclusions about high achieving individuals. Specifically, those individuals who were deemed more successful and influential than their contemporary counterparts typically possessed traits above and beyond that of normal ability.[2][4][5] While ability was still critically important, these individuals also possessed “zeal” and “persistence of motive and effort.”[3]Duckworth and colleagues (2007) believe this dual-component of grit to be a crucial differentiator from similar constructs. Grit is conceptualized as a stable trait that does not require immediate positive feedback.[3] Individuals high in grit are able to maintain their determination and motivation over long periods despite experiences with failure and adversity. Their passion and commitment towards the long-term objective is the overriding factor that provides the stamina required to “stay the course” amid challenges and set-backs. Essentially, the grittier person is focused on winning the marathon, not the sprint.
Non-Cognitive Skills: Productive Persistence = Tenacity + Good Strategies
Mindset • Productive Struggle • Taking the time to explore, investigating multiple methods, and articulating a chain of reasoning behind the approaches • Struggling and persisting through challenging problems leads to valuable insists and aids in the learning process; students need to understand the value of productive struggle • Effort Model • Struggling provides a chance to demonstrate the ability to persevere through difficult challenges • Ability Model • Errors are often interpreted as indications of failure and may imply that the potential to learn is lacking • When students’ views fall into this model they often believe that if they are struggling it means that they are not smart
Mindset about academic potential: “I’m not smart at math?” Ask students to read a 3-page research study and write a reflection piece afterward. Remind them that intelligence is not fixed, but malleable (Fixed intelligence vs. Growth mindset). Leads to a substantial increase in persistence rate.
Percentage of students who earned 12+ credits in the first semester of college as a function of growth mindset treatment among all students (N= 7,342) and African American students (N = 356). The figure shows effects of the web-based growth mindset intervention delivered in the Summer before freshman year at a large four-year university
Community College students randomly assigned to the growth mindset treatment earned higher semester GPAs after the intervention
Community College students’ exposure to the growth mindset intervention reduced dropout from math courses in the sub-sample of students taking developmental math
Summer 2014 Mindset Intervention Pilot at Wright College Students in developmental reading, writing, and math courses will read the article “You Can Grow Your Brain” which explains that struggling through challenging work with effective strategies causes areas of the brain to grow • Lesson 1 • Students were given the “You Can Grow Your Brain” article to read • As a homework assignment, students will then be asked to reflect and work on the following exercise: • Can the human brain develop? • How do we know? • List 3 examples.
Summer 2014 Mindset Intervention Pilot at Wright College • Lesson 2 • Instructor will lead a discussion in class: Why is practicing a skill so important, and what does it do to our brains? • Students will then be asked to complete the following homework assignments: (A) Think about an example from your own life of something that you weren’t at first good at. Then you practiced it using a good strategy and became really good at it. Write about it and explain how you improved. (B) Imagine a friend who is struggling in school. This friend used to do pretty well in school but now is having a hard time and is starting to feel dumb. Write a paragraph to your friend to encourage him or her—tell them about what you just learned about the brain and why they shouldn’t be discouraged. (C) How does this article affect the way you think about your ability to learn new things? Also, describe 1 specific action you will take to apply what you have just learned about the human brain.
Level Up Growth Mindset Pilot in Summer 2014 • “I have learned so much already and my (study habit) has changed because of the growth mindset”. • “What I have learned in this program helped me by building the growth mindset that I need with reading and writing; these were my weaknesses. I practiced a lot with reading and writing. The more I practice the more I get better at these two subjects”. • “I think that (changing from having a) fixed mindset to a growth mindset has helped me to face the challenges in Reading, Math, English, and Writing”. • “I have a growth mindset now that I've completed most of the class assignments. I will overcome many challenges because of this course”. • “When I came here I had a fixed mindset because I realized that I wouldn't be able to do any of the math and I wouldn't get a good grade. After awhile, I developed a growth mindset because I realized that by doing this program its helping me improve my writing and mathematical skills”.
Mindset about the value of school work: “What’s the point of doing this?”
Mindset Interventions: Next Steps • Assess the relationship between growth mindset and classroom behaviors • Pilot “Value of School” and “Social Belonging” mindset interventions in Fall 2014 • Assess the “Growth Mindset” interventions in Summer 2014 and track students’ GPA and persistence rates in Fall 2014 and Spring 2015
Five Non-Cognitive Skills • Start homework assignments in class* • Clear and explicit directions* • Planners • Set up procedures so students can access missed homework* • GradesFirst Early-Alert* Farrington et al., 2012
Utility Intervention • Class quiz – 5-10 minutes at beginning of class the day after an exam • Worth 3 quiz points • Prompt: Spend 5-10 minutes explaining how something that you have learned in this class is useful to both your personal life and your professional life. • Anonymous. Good?
Ways to Combat Fixed Mindsets Teaching about brain plasticity (movie)
Social-belonging Intervention: • In-class assignment ~30 minutes • Treatment group gets paragraphs from previous students saying social belonging got better. • Treatment subjects asked to write essays that will be turned into letters describing examples of their own social-belonging improving over time and are told this will be shown to future 1st year students.
Social-Belonging InterventionResults Two-way RM ANOVA, posthocTukey P = <0.05 for majority control and treatment versus minority control P = 0.021 minority treatment over time
Read the following list of common values. Which ones matter most to you? Which do you most naturally use to guide your choices? What do you appreciate about yourself? Circle your top three. If something comes to mind that is not on this list, write it down. Choose one of your top values and write about it for 10-15 minutes. Describe why this value is important to you, and a time in your life when you had the opportunity to really express this value. If you would like to make this an exercise in self-compassion, you can also write about a difficult experience or decision you are facing, and how you can use this value to support or guide yourself. List of 30 values Value-Intervention
Five Non-Cognitive Skills • Formative assessment • Questions on assignments like “what is this question about” or “what steps will you use to solve this problem?” • Detailed activity log for studying • Mental contrasting • Implementation intentions • Set away class time to review goals
Five Non-Cognitive Skills • Not a lot of data • Student-teacher relationships • Cooperative learning • Safe environments
Faculty members who teach eved courses are welcome to participate in these pilots… please contact Kevin Li for more details.Thank you for your support!
