Teaching a 'growth mindset' reliably raises student achievement.
Verdict: mixed
Effects are real but small on average, and concentrated among lower-achieving and disadvantaged students.
What the evidence shows
The idea, from Carol Dweck's research, is that believing ability can grow leads students to persist and improve. Enthusiastic adoption in schools outran the evidence.
Sisk et al. (2018), two meta-analyses, found only a weak overall association between mindset and achievement and small average effects of mindset interventions — with stronger effects for at-risk and low-income students. The best single test, a pre-registered national experiment (Yeager et al., 2019, Nature), delivered a short online intervention to over 12,000 U.S. ninth-graders and found a small but real improvement in grades among lower-achieving students, especially where the school culture supported it. So the strong universal claim is not supported, but a targeted, well-implemented version has a modest genuine effect.
Sources
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
Overall mindset–achievement links were weak and average intervention effects small, but effects were stronger for high-risk and low-income students.
DOI: 10.1177/0956797617739704 →Yeager, D. S., Hanselman, P., Walton, G. M., et al. (2019). A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement.
Nature, 573(7774), 364–369
A brief online mindset intervention modestly improved grades among lower-achieving ninth-graders, especially in supportive school environments.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1466-y →