Here we evaluate the potential for growth mindset interventions (that teach students that intellectual abilities can be developed) to inspire adolescents to be "learners"-that is, to seek out challenging learning experiences. In a previous analysis, the U.S. National Study of Learning Mindsets (NSLM) showed that a growth mindset could improve the grades of lower-achieving adolescents, and, in an exploratory analysis, increase enrollment in advanced math courses across achievement levels. Yet, the importance of being a "learner" in today's global economy requires clarification and replication of potential challenge-seeking effects, as well as an investigation of the school affordances that make intervention effects on challenge-seeking possible. To this end, the present article presents new analyses of the U.S. NSLM (N = 14,472) to (a) validate a standardized, behavioral measure of challenge-seeking (the "make-a-math worksheet" task), and (b) show that the growth mindset treatment increased challenge-seeking on this task. Second, a new experiment conducted with nearly all schools in 2 counties in Norway, the U-say experiment (N = 6,541), replicated the effects of the growth mindset intervention on the behavioral challenge-seeking task and on increased advanced math course-enrollment rates. Treated students took (and subsequently passed) advanced math at a higher rate. Critically, the U-say experiment provided the first direct evidence that a structural factor-school policies governing when and how students opt in to advanced math-can afford students the possibility of profiting from a growth mindset intervention or not. These results highlight the importance of motivational research that goes beyond grades or performance alone and focuses on challenge-seeking. The findings also call attention to the affordances of school contexts that interact with student motivation to promote better achievement and economic trajectories. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

---

我们如何才能激励各国的学习者？对两个国家的成长心态和寻求挑战的调查。


在这里，我们评估了成长心态干预（教导学生智力是可以发展的）的潜力，以激励青少年成为“学习者”，即寻找具有挑战性的学习经历。在之前的分析中，美国国家学习心态研究 (NSLM) 表明，成长心态可以提高成绩较低的青少年的成绩，并且在探索性分析中，可以增加不同成绩水平的高级数学课程的入学人数。然而，在当今的全球经济中，成为“学习者”的重要性需要澄清和复制潜在的挑战寻求效应，以及对学校的可供性进行调查，从而使对挑战寻求的干预效应成为可能。为此，本文提出了对美国 NSLM（N = 14,472）的新分析，以 (a) 验证寻求挑战的标准化行为测量（“制作数学工作表”任务），以及 (b)表明成长心态治疗增加了对这项任务的挑战寻求。其次，在挪威 2 个县的几乎所有学校中进行的一项新实验，即 U-say 实验（N = 6,541），复制了成长心态干预对寻求行为挑战任务和增加高级数学课程入学人数的影响费率。接受治疗的学生参加（并随后通过）高等数学的比例更高。至关重要的是，U-say 实验提供了第一个直接证据，证明结构性因素——学校政策规定学生何时以及如何选择高等数学——可以为学生提供从成长心态干预中获益的可能性。这些结果凸显了动机研究的重要性，它超越了单纯的成绩或表现，并侧重于寻求挑战。 研究结果还引起人们对学校环境的可供性的关注，这些环境与学生的动机相互作用，以促进更好的成就和经济轨迹。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2020 APA，保留所有权利）。