The effect of a growth mindset intervention on underprivileged students’ English intelligence mindset and academic resilience with perceived English teacher support as a moderator

Abstract

The main purposes of this study were to delve into the effects of a growth mindset intervention on underprivileged students’ growth mindset in English intelligence and academic resilience in English and into the mediating role of the growth mindset. Also, this research examined the moderating role of perceived English teacher support. Participants were 216 Mattayom 2 students from 2 schools in the Eastern region of Thailand (The second school served as a site for partial replication). Students from each school were systematically assigned into two groups based on their odd or even student identification numbers. The experimental conditions were randomly assigned to the two groups: one receiving brief English sessions and additional growth mindset fostering activities and the other receiving the same English teachings with additional activities of similar format but not related to a growth mindset. Participants responded to self-report measures of growth mindset in English intelligence and perceived English teacher support at pretest and measures of growth mindset in English intelligence and academic resilience in English at posttest. Statistical analyses revealed that both schools yielded similar results. That is, two-way mixed factorial ANOVA showed that there was a significant increase in the growth mindset in the treatment but not in the control group and independent t-test revealed that the treatment group also had significantly higher academic resilience than the other group. Mediation analysis presented that the growth mindset in English intelligence fully mediated the intervention effect on the resilience. However, moderated mediation analysis demonstrated that perceived English teacher support did not moderate the intervention. For the implications and applications of this present study, it is expected that this program will be applied to deliver to underprivileged students in other schools and contexts. Also, it is anticipated that students will put the ideas gained from the intervention into use and expand the growth mindset enkindled starting with the English subject to other subjects and other domains of intelligence and abilities in their lives, with high hopes that the mindset can in turn help students to academically bounce back from educational as well as personal adversities.