Upping Graduation Rate at Open Access Colleges: The Changing of Belief in Fixed Mindsets and Stereotypic Threats
Location
Room 1005
Proposal Track
Research Project
Session Format
Round Table
Abstract
Twenty years of research has demonstrated that brief psychological interventions can produce long-lasting changes in student performance both in elementary and secondary school as well as in college. Such seemingly simple interventions appear unlikely to produce any - much less lasting - effects, yet carefully designed brief interventions show significant and persistent increases in the performance of “at-risk” students. These studies show that such students succeed at significantly higher rates when they adopt a conviction that intelligence is not immutable but can be improved, and that when adverse events occur, such as failing a test, such are not a reflection upon their inadequacy but instead are a reason to learn. These changes in attitude have been consistently been shown to be reproducible by interventions of no more than an hour. I will be proposing research at my institution to test whether like interventions can be designed to facilitate the performance of students who have had limited academic success during their elementary and high school experience. My wish is to discuss with faculty at other institutions (a) what experiences they might have had with these interventions and far more importantly (b) whether they might be interested in working toward multi-institution joint research projects.
Keywords
Intervention, Graduation rate, College, Performance, Persistence
Recommended Citation
Eads, Jerry, "Upping Graduation Rate at Open Access Colleges: The Changing of Belief in Fixed Mindsets and Stereotypic Threats" (2014). Georgia Educational Research Association Conference. 82.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gera/2014/2014/82
Upping Graduation Rate at Open Access Colleges: The Changing of Belief in Fixed Mindsets and Stereotypic Threats
Room 1005
Twenty years of research has demonstrated that brief psychological interventions can produce long-lasting changes in student performance both in elementary and secondary school as well as in college. Such seemingly simple interventions appear unlikely to produce any - much less lasting - effects, yet carefully designed brief interventions show significant and persistent increases in the performance of “at-risk” students. These studies show that such students succeed at significantly higher rates when they adopt a conviction that intelligence is not immutable but can be improved, and that when adverse events occur, such as failing a test, such are not a reflection upon their inadequacy but instead are a reason to learn. These changes in attitude have been consistently been shown to be reproducible by interventions of no more than an hour. I will be proposing research at my institution to test whether like interventions can be designed to facilitate the performance of students who have had limited academic success during their elementary and high school experience. My wish is to discuss with faculty at other institutions (a) what experiences they might have had with these interventions and far more importantly (b) whether they might be interested in working toward multi-institution joint research projects.
