Global Mindset Initiative Working Paper 2: Designing an Intervention to Motivate Growth Mindset-Supportive Teaching Practices

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to outline what we believe to be promising a strategy for developing a scalable behavioral intervention to encourage teachers to adopt teaching practices that support a growth-mindset classroom culture. We first briefly review the most widely-implemented current policies and programs aimed at influencing teachers' instructional practices and consider, based on the available research, how effective those approaches are likely to be for encouraging growth mindset-supportive teaching practices. We then lay out what we believe to be the most important psychological forces currently at play, either facilitating or hindering teachers’ adoption of such practices. On the basis of this analysis of existing psychological forces, and drawing ideas from the research literature in four complementary disciplines, we propose an “intervention toolkit”—candidate intervention ideas that we suggest should be considered for inclusion as components of a larger intervention. Throughout, we identify additional issues for consideration in designing the intervention and important questions for future research.

Keywords: growth mindset, behavior change, teacher training, teacher practices, interventions, motivation, education, classroom culture, inequality