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To What Extent and Under Which Circumstances Are Growth Mind-Sets Important to Academic Achievement? Two Meta-Analyses

We recommend it as the required companion to the Mindset card on this shelf: the frame is worth having and the popular claim is stronger than the measurement, and a member deserves both halves.

Unreviewed — agent-drafted

This card was drafted by a software agent. It quotes nothing from the work itself; everything below is a description written for this catalogue, and the bibliographic details were checked against a public catalogue on the date shown.

PaperVictoria F. Sisk, Alexander P. Burgoyne, Jingze Sun, Jennifer L. Butler and Brooke N. Macnamara2018About 4 hours

Why this one

We recommend it as the required companion to the Mindset card on this shelf: the frame is worth having and the popular claim is stronger than the measurement, and a member deserves both halves.

Two meta-analyses in one paper: how strongly the mindset construct relates to achievement, and how much mindset interventions move it. Both averages are small, and the interventions that did show an effect were concentrated among academically at-risk and low-income students rather than spread across everybody.

How a moderator analysis rescues the useful part of a finding from an average that hides it; why a small average effect and a real effect in a subgroup are compatible claims; and what publication bias checks look like when they are done properly.

Do this while you read

Two things to try

  • Read the two effect sizes and write them down, then compare them with how the idea was described to you.
  • Find the moderator table and write which group the interventions actually helped.
  • Take one educational programme you know of and ask which subgroup its evidence came from.
What this card assumes

Level, and what it means here

This is a primary source written for specialists, and it assumes the earlier items in its collection. It is a description of the paper, not of you.

learningevidence-and-statisticspsychology

Bibliographic details

What was checked, and when

  1. Victoria F. Sisk, Alexander P. Burgoyne, Jingze Sun, Jennifer L. Butler and Brooke N. Macnamara. (2018). To What Extent and Under Which Circumstances Are Growth Mind-Sets Important to Academic Achievement? Two Meta-Analyses. Psychological ScienceChecked 2026-09-04Vol. 29, no. 4, pp. 549–571 — metadata resolved at api.crossref.org on 2026-09-04.
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