Does a growth mindset really help students? What the research says
"Growth mindset" is one of the best-known ideas in education. It's the belief that abilities like intelligence aren't fixed, but can grow with effort, good strategies and help from others. The opposite, a "fixed mindset", is the belief that you're simply good or bad at something.
The idea is appealing – but how much difference does it really make? Two large studies give a more careful answer than most posters on classroom walls.
What the meta-analyses found
In 2018, Victoria Sisk, Alexander Burgoyne and colleagues published two meta-analyses. The first looked at how strongly students' mindsets were related to their grades and test scores. The second looked at experiments that tried to change students' mindsets.
Both found that, overall, the effects were weak. There was some evidence that students from lower-income families or who were already struggling academically might benefit more.
The national experiment
In 2019, David Yeager and a large team published a study in Nature with a nationally representative sample of high-school students in the United States. Students did a short online growth-mindset programme – under an hour in total.
The result: a small improvement in grades for lower-achieving students, and more students choosing advanced math courses. For higher-achieving students, grades barely changed. The researchers also found that the effect depended on the school: it was larger where classmates and school culture supported the message.
So what does this mean?
- A growth mindset is not a magic switch. Telling students "you can grow your brain" doesn't, by itself, transform results for most of them.
- But a short, well-designed message can give a real, if modest, boost to students who are struggling – and that's worthwhile.
- Mindset works best alongside good teaching and good strategies. Believing you can improve only helps if you also know how to improve.
Putting it into practice
For students:
- When something is hard, add "yet": I don't understand fractions yet.
- Treat mistakes as information: what did this wrong answer teach me?
- Focus on strategies, not just effort. If something isn't working, try a different method – testing yourself, spacing practice out, asking for help.
For parents and teachers:
- Praise the process: the strategy, the effort, the improvement – not "you're so smart". Feedback about the task and how to improve tends to help more than praise about the person. How to help with homework.
- Make it safe to be wrong. Low-stakes practice, like short quizzes, lets students learn from mistakes without fear.
In TONEC STUDY
TONEC STUDY tries to make progress visible: levels, streaks and badges show how practice adds up over time, and every wrong answer comes with an explanation so a mistake becomes the next thing to learn.
The research
- 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).
- Yeager, D. S., Hanselman, P., Walton, G. M., Murray, J. S., et al. (2019). A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement. Nature, 573(7774).