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SAMI SERT
STEM professors’ beliefs about their students’ intelligence may factor into their academic performance, researchers reported today (February 15) in Science Advances.
The researchers surveyed 150 professors spanning many STEM departments at a large public university to see if they held a growth mindset, namely, the view that intelligence and ability can develop over time, or if they thought intelligence was fixed. They also examined the academic records of more than 15,000 students to correlate classroom performance with their professors’ views on intelligence.
The results showed that professors who viewed intelligence as malleable had narrower racial achievement gaps and better overall performance in their classrooms. In growth-minded classrooms, the gap between minorities, black, Latino, and Native American students, and white and Asian students was 0.1 GPA points. The difference almost doubled to 0.19 points in classes taught by professors with a fixed mindset.
The faculty members’ mentality ...
