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Inspiration for the project

“People with a fixed mindset—those who believe that abilities are fixed—are less likely to flourish than those with a growth mindset—those who believe that abilities can be developed.”
​Carol S. Dweck

A combination of passions and events inspired me to research goal setting and growth mindset.

• As stated on my home page, helping students meet their goals is one of my absolute favorite things about teaching.
• The past few years I have implemented goal setting strategies in my classroom in order to help students better track and make progress toward academic computer based programs funded by my school site/district such as ST Math and iRead.
• I have observed that my students are far more successful in meeting their academic goals when we have set times to set, reflect on, and discuss them in class.
• I was AVID trained at Summer Institute in July 2017, during which time growth mindset was presented to me in a transformative way for students.
• I attended a Jo Boaler workshop in August 2017 where I learned about many challenges in the world of math education, and the importance of mindset in math.

Background and Need for this project

The student achievement gap in mathematics necessitates this study. According to the Nation’s Report Card, 60% of fourth grade, and 77% of eighth grade students in the United States did not meet proficiency standards for mathematics in 2015 (Nation’s Report Card, 2015).  In the state of California 62% of 3rd-11th grade students are not meeting standards for mathematics achievement (California Department of Education [CDE], 2017).  In the district where the study took place, the CDE website shared that 67% of students are not meeting math standards. At the school site where this study was performed, 45% of third through fifth students are not meeting grade level mathematics standards (CDE, 2017). 
It is evident from these results, that there is significant room for improvement in the state of California in the areas of mathematics teaching and learning. The math skills these students are lacking are important for them to have in order to be successful in college and later on in life. Since growth mindset and goal setting are strategies that have been proven to boost student achievement, it was necessary to determine the relationship between the two in relation to math achievement in order to consider or rule out the combination of these strategies as a possible solution to this problem.  

​I am aware that in California, we have huge student achievement challenges in mathematics. On the State of California Department of Education website (cde.ca.gov) it shows that of all students in 3-11th grade in our state 63% of students are not meeting standards for mathematics achievement.  In Napa Valley Unified School District, where I teach, the same website shares that 55% of students in our district are not meeting math standards. At my school site, Northwood Elementary, 39% of students are not meeting the standards. I can see from these results, that there is a lot of room for improvement, and I wanted to investigate the possibility of growth mindset and goal setting assisting our students in achieving higher mathematics skills.  ​

Three seminal researchers in these areas inspired me with their work.

1. Jo Boaler ​

​When growth mindset is taken into account in regards to math teaching, students have been found to develop a better understanding of math strategies, and a more positive outlook toward approaching math learning.  ​Jo Boaler is a seminal researcher, speaker and writer in the area of mindset in relation to mathematics.  She is known for helping students achieve high levels of thinking in math, especially those who have formerly underperformed, and did not believe that they were capable of math achievement.  She has run math camps for students, and contributes to a website (youcubed.org) containing activities and courses for students and teachers to use to improve the way they think about and approach math (Boaler, 2015). “In Mathematical Mindsets, Boaler “translates Carol Dweck's concept of 'mindset' into math teaching and parenting strategies, showing how students can go from self-doubt to strong self-confidence, which is so important to math learning.”     

2. Carol Dweck

Growth mindset has been proven to empower students to make academic progress (Dweck, 2006). Carol Dweck has been a leader and seminal researcher regarding growth mindset.  Her studies focus on achievement and success, and she has challenged some of the traditional methods parents and teachers use to praise children.  She found that when students are praised for their effort rather than how smart they are, they are more willing to take on challenging tasks. Her findings also revealed that low- achieving students were especially impacted when teachers implemented mindset strategies in the classroom.  These strategies have been proven to help students raise their grades dramatically when they experience this type of mindset intervention.  

3. John Hattie 

 While goal setting does encourage children to self-evaluate, research has concluded  that goal setting has a positive effect on student achievement. In Visible Learning, John Hattie (2008) studied the effect size of various influential factors on achievement. When Hattie first conducted this study in 2008, he found that self- reported grades had the greatest amount of influence on learning out of all the factors he studied. This study was developed through meta-analyses of 50,000 research articles on around 240 million students. He determined that self- reported grades had an effect size of 1.4. In this report, he suggested that anything with a positive effect of .40 was about an average school year’s worth of student growth, so anything significantly higher than that could be considered a very useful strategy for boosting student achievement . This could mean that students who self-report grades have the possibility of obtaining about 3 school years worth of learning in a single year. Hattie’s study on self-reported grades is closely related to goal setting, as students take responsibility for monitoring and reporting their own progress. Thus, goal setting has the potential, through simultaneous implementation with growth mindset strategies, to aid students in the area of math achievement.  ​