A randomized controlled trial that explores the effects of parental growth mindset intervention on parent beliefs, and children's mindset and arithmetic skills.

Both the treatment and control has four weekly sessions. All sessions are done online.

TREATMENT:
In week 1 we explain how important parents are to the development of their child. We also teach them about the malleability of the brain, and how children learn while working on challenging tasks. In week 2 the parents learn about how failure is normal, and how they can support their children to view mistakes as a learning opportunity instead of defeat. In week 3 we explain the difference between process- and person-feedback, and how process-feedback will help their children become better learners. In weeks 1-3 the sessions end with a specific activity the parents can use to foster the desired behavior explained in the session. Week 4 contains a summary of the previous weeks.

CONTROL:
In week 1 the participants learn about how the brain develops from childhood to adulthood, and that children do not have the same capabilities to plan and concentrate as adults, as these skills are still in development during childhood. In week 2 they learn about how they can support their children's ability to plan - they receive two activities that they can use for this purpose. In week 3 the topic is concentration, and the parents learn one activity that they can do to support their child's ability to concentrate. Week 4 contains a summary of the previous weeks.

2022-04-20

2022-06-22

PARENTS:
- Theory of intelligence (Dweck, 2008)
- Perceived parental impact (Boivin et al., 2005)
- Failure mindset (Haimovitz and Dweck, 2016)
- Beliefs about fixedness of ability (Muenks et al., 2015)
- Praise, criticism, and challenge mindsets (self developed)

CHILDREN:
- Epistemic curiosity: Intellectual interest and informational deprivation (Piotrowski, Litman, & Valkenburg, 2014)
- Growth mindset: Theory of intelligence (Dweck, 1999 and 2008); growth mindset measures from Ruzek et al. (2020); and a self-developed measure that focuses on school ability (adapted from Dweck's TOI) .
- Arithmetical facts (Klausen & Reikerås, 2016)

Praise, criticism, and challenge mindsets for parents are self developed.
They are all measured using a 6-point Likert scale (agree to disagree).

Praise and criticism mindset are used to check whether the parents use primarily process- or person-feedback.

Praise mindset consists of the following four items:
1. When my child is doing something well, I usually praise his/her abilities.
2. If my child does well on his/her homework, I usually praise his/her abilities.
3. When my child does something well, I usually praise his/her effort or learning strategies.
4. If my child is doing something well, I try to avoid praising his/her abilities.

Criticism mindset consists of the following four items:
1. When my child makes a mistake, I usually focus my feedback on his/her abilities.
2. If my child makes a mistake on his/her homework, I usually focus my feedback on his/her abilities.
3. When my child makes a mistake, I usually focus my feedback on his/her effort or learning strategies.
4. If my child makes a mistake, I try to avoid focusing my feedback on his/her abilities.

Parents challenge mindset are measured to gauge their view on challenges, and consists of the following four items:
1. My child should get assignments at school that he/she can easily solve.
2. To get the most amount of correct answers, my child should always choose easy assignments at school.
3. My child should be academically challenged at school.
4. Even if it leads to some mistakes, my child should always choose assignments that he/she finds challenging.

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Self-developed measure on children's growth mindset related to school abilities (adapted from Dweck's TOI) :
1. People are born either good at school or not good at school. This can't be changed.
2. You cannot change how good you are at school.
3. How good you are at school is not something that you can change very much.

We collaborate with school to recruit parents to join the experiment. The school sends out invitations to all parents with children in 1.-3. grade in week 16 of - 2022. The parents then have to sign-up to participate in the experiment.

All participating parents receive four weekly online sessions. The treatment group receives the parental growth mindset intervention, while the control group receives information of children's brain and skill development. All sessions are delivered through Qualtrics. The parents can choose whether to use a phone, tablet or laptop to complete the sessions.

Parents baseline measures are gathered just before the first session, and the parents post-intervention measures are gathered right after the last (fourth) session.

In week 22 we will go to the school to administer the arithmetic facts test and the gather the children's answers to the growth mindset questions. The children will complete the arithmetic facts test on paper, and the answers to the growth mindset questions will be gathered through the children's school Chromebooks, using Mentimeter.

We collaborate with school to recruit parents to join the experiment. The school sends out invitations to all parents with children in 1.-3. grade. Every other invitation contains a link to either the treatment or the control. This is done to make sure that we randomize on the family level, and that parents of the same child end up in the same group.

Family (child)

No

100 children
150 parents

100 children 150 parents

50 children in treatment and 50 in control
75 parents in treatment and 75 in control

Children: We are able to detect an effect size of 0.57 standard deviations (power = 80% and alpha = 0.05). Parents: We are able to detect an effect size of 0.46 standard deviations (power = 80% and alpha = 0.05). We expect that including parent characteristics will enhance the statistical power.