Introductory data science courses have the potential to provide students from diverse backgrounds skills for working with and reasoning about data. However, what predicts success in these courses remains poorly understood. Here we investigate how students' initial psychological orientation relates to their subsequent engagement and learning. In Study 1, we took an observational approach, analyzing data from 1306 students across 11 institutions using an interactive online textbook. Students' psychological orientation, (e.g., math anxiety, stress expectations) predicted performance on assessments administered throughout the term. In Study 2, we developed and tested an intervention targeting these aspects of students' learning experience among 146 students enrolled in a single course. Preliminary analyses suggest that this intervention shifted students' beliefs about the relationship between stress and learning. This work highlights the promise of combining observational studies with interventions for advancing understanding of how affective and cognitive processes interact to support learning in real-world settings.

A mathematical mindset approach to student learning Jo Boaler, Nomellini and Olivier Professor in the Graduate School of Education (Mathematics) at Stanford University, explores a mathematical mindset approach to student learning. I am a Professor at Stanford University, and I work to improve students' mathematics learning in and out of school. I started working with Carol Dweck in 2010 when we agreed together that her powerful work on mindset could be shared with mathematics teachers and their students. Dweck has found that students who believe in their own potential, and embrace times of challenge and struggle, achieve at higher levels (Dweck, 2006). For the last decade, I have been sharing a “mathematical mindset” approach, with free resources for educators and parents, and researching its impact. One of the ways we share this approach is through our Stanford website: youcubed. This is a website sharing thousands of free resources. It is also a research center at Stanford, where I work with undergraduates, masters, and doctoral students, building resources and studying their effectiveness.

Over the past decade, mindset research has increasingly moved beyond the individual, examining how beliefs about ability are shaped and reinforced by the broader social context. This paper extends that work by focusing on peers, a powerful but underexplored influence in adolescent development. We introduce a theoretical framework for understanding peer mindset culture: the shared beliefs that peers hold and communicate about whether ability is fixed or can grow. We argue that fixed mindset peer cultures can erode students' sense of belonging by (a) triggering identity threats (e.g., stereotype threat, perceived mismatch with peers' beliefs, or social contagion of fixed norms), and (b) weakening social connection (e.g., peer selection and low support). We argue that these dynamics are especially consequential for students from minoritized backgrounds, those who are struggling academically, and those who personally endorse a growth mindset. Finally, we outline principles for designing peer-focused mindset interventions. Our goal is to provide avenues for future research and practical strategies to support all students in developing a strong sense of belonging in their learning environments.

Compared to continuing-generation bachelor's graduates (CGGs), first-generation bachelor's graduates (FGGs) are underrepresented in U.S. STEM PhD programs. To better understand how students choose to pursue PhDs, we analyzed interview data from 62 FGG and CGG first-year PhD students in bioscience. Across the sample, four themes emerged to illustrate how social, cognitive, and contextual conditions influenced students' decisions to pursue a PhD: research experiences, social support, career autonomy and impact, and program fit and finances. Findings showed how undergraduate experiences critically shape FGGs' career expectations and goals and revealed additional differences in FGGs' and CGGs' career values and decision-making.

Hesborn Wao, Ph

Socioeconomic disparities in academic progress have persisted throughout the history of the United States, and growth mindset interventions-which shift beliefs about the malleability of intelligence-have shown promise in reducing these disparities. Both the study of such disparities and how to remedy them can benefit from taking the long view on adolescent development, following the tradition of John Schulenberg. To do so, this study focuses on the role of growth mindsets in short-term academic progress during the transition to high school as a contributor to longer-term educational attainment. Guided by the Mindset x Context perspective, we analyzed new follow-up data to a one-year nationally representative study of ninth graders (National Study of Learning Mindsets, n = 10,013; 50% female; 53% white; 63% from lower-SES backgrounds). A conservative Bayesian analysis revealed that adolescents' growth mindset beliefs at the beginning of ninth grade predicted their enrollment in college 4 years later. These patterns were stronger for adolescents from lower-SES backgrounds, and there was some evidence that the ninth-grade math teacher's support for the growth mindset moderated student mindset effects. Thus, a time-specific combination of student and teacher might alter long-term trajectories by enabling adolescents to develop and use beliefs at a critical transition point that supports a cumulative pathway of course-taking and achievement into college. Notably, growth mindset became less predictive of college enrollment after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which occurred in the second year of college and introduced structural barriers to college persistence.

In this study, we identified multidimensional profiles in students' math anxiety, math self-concept, and math interest using data from a large generalizable sample of 16,547 9th grade students in the United States who participated in the National Study of Learning Mindsets. We also analyzed the extent that students' profile memberships are associated with related measures such as prior mathematics achievement, academic stress, and challenge-seeking behavior. Five multidimensional profiles were identified: two profiles which demonstrated relatively high levels of interest and self-concept, along with low math anxiety, in line with the tenets of the control-value theory of academic emotions (C-VTAE); two profiles which demonstrated relatively low levels of interest and self-concept, and high levels of math anxiety (again in accordance with C-VTAE); and one profile, comprising more than 37% of the total sample, which demonstrated medium levels of interest, high levels of self-concept, and medium levels of anxiety. All five profiles varied significantly from one another in their association with the distal variables of challenge seeking behavior, prior mathematics achievement, and academic stress. This study contributes to the literature on math anxiety, self-concept, and interest by identifying and validating student profiles that mainly align with the control-value theory of academic emotions in a large, generalizable sample.

Group-based educational disparities are smaller in classrooms where teachers express a belief that students can improve their abilities. However, a scalable method for motivatthat overcame these obstacles and successfully motivated high-school teachers to adopt specific practices that support students' growth mindsets. The intervention used the values-alignment approach. This approach motivates behavioral change by framing a desired behavior as aligned with a core value-one that is an important criterion for status and admiration in the relevant social reference group. First, using qualitative interviews and a nationally representative survey of teachers, we identified a relevant core value: inspiring students' enthusiastic engagement with learning. Next, we designed a similar to 45-min, self-administered, online intervention that persuaded teachers to view growth mindset-supportive practices as a way to foster such student engagement and thus live up to that value. We randomly assigned 155 teachers (5,393 students) to receive the intervention and 164 teachers (6,167 students) to receive a control module. The growth mindset-supportive teaching intervention successfully promoted teachers' adoption of the suggested practices, overcoming major barriers to changing teachers' classroom practices that other scalable approaches have failed to surmount. The intervention also substantially improved student achievement in socioeconomically disadvantaged classes, reducing inequality in educational outcomes.