Abstract:

Cultivating growth mindset is an important strategy for the International Economic Cooperation and Development Organization to enhance the core competencies of adolescents. However, recent empirical studies have weakened or even reversed the positive driving force of growth mindset cultivation, and there is a lack of empirical evidence from East Asia. Addressing the debate of effectiveness of growth mindset intervention and its cross-cultural applicability, this study designed and implemented culturally adapted growth mindset intervention program to a randomized trial and three-year follow-up study at a rural primary school in the Yangtze River Delta region from 2021 to 2024, and used the Difference in Difference method to evaluate the intervention effect. The study found that the intervention program significantly improved the growth mindset level of rural students and had a long-term effect. The effect was more significant for younger students or those with lower initial mindset levels. Besides, the growth mindset enhancement brought about by the intervention effectively improved the students’ learning behavior, including suppressing negative learning motivation, weakening ability-based attribution, improving process-based peer feedback, and strengthening effort-based attribution. Accordingly, schools, families, and society should collaborate closely to jointly create a growth-oriented educational environment, strengthen growing educational principles, equip disadvantaged students with growth mindset as early and as sustained as possible, and bridge academic gaps while promoting educational equity through the development of psychological capital.

Key words: growth mindset, adolescents, intervention and follow-up, learning behavior