Evaluation of a Growth Mindset Intervention in Bangladesh Secondary Schools

4 weekly 1-hour sessions led by trained teachers from outside the study school.
(Sample: students in levels 6, 7 and 8 in two large secondary schools in Dhaka city)

Growth mindset sessions:
Sessions will be interactive lectures designed to teach the core concepts of growth mindset to students. These concepts include basic brain anatomy/function, plasticity of the brain (the brain can physically become stronger and more efficient when you work on learning new things), discussion of the value of effort/grit, strategies for coping with challenges and failure (re-framing, trying new strategies, working with others, etc...) and study skills (concept based learning, practice, etc...).

2017-08-06

2017-08-31

6 monthly math quizzes (3 pre, 3 post), written and graded by our team.
Attendance and other grades provided by the schools.

1000 students in levels 6, 7 and 8 from 2 large secondary schools in Dhaka city will be randomly assigned to the treatment, placebo or control condition. For one hour per week, over the first 4 weeks of the fall semester, students will participate in 1 hour intervention sessions according to their assignment. Students assigned to treatment will receive a traditional growth mindset treatment, those in the placebo group will receive a modified version designed to help disentangle the mechanisms behind growth mindset, and students in the control group will get supervised study time.

Placebo:
Intervention will be same as Growth mindset but instead of teaching plasticity of the brain we will teach memory formation, an alternate topic on the brain that is related to learning but that makes no comment on whether the brain can physically be improved. The current growth mindset literature explains that the impact of growth mindset interventions is largely due to changing students beliefs about the malleability of intelligence. Our placebo will make no attempt to change these beliefs, thus, any difference will be due to the teaching of plasticity. If we find no difference between placebo and control it will suggest that teaching plasticity is not as important as previously thought. Other studies have included placebo without placebo, however these placebos also left out other key elements of the growth mindset intervention, namely a discussion of the value of effort/grit and strategies for coping with challenges and failure (re-framing, trying new strategies, working with others, etc...), thus we cannot conclude that the impact measured in these studies was due to plasticity alone.

Office computer, stratifying on key covariates identified in baseline data.

Student.

We randomize at the student level, then separate students by assignment and treat them in groups. However this is not a traditional clustered randomized trial where clusters are endogenously formed. Also note, students will only remain in these "clusters" during treatment then will return to their usual classroom assignments. (thus i have chosen not clustered below)

No

1000

1000

333

Outcome: Monthly Math quizzes (max score, 25 points). MDE: 0.3 points, 0.06 SD, 1.2% Note: This is about one third the size of effects reported in previous growth mindset studies.