Mindset and Study Performance: New Scales and Research Directions
: Mikko Apiola, Erkki Sutinen
: Nick Falkner, Otto Seppälä
: Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research
Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery
: 2020
: Proceedings of the 20th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research
: ACM International Conference Proceeding Series
: 1
: 9
: 978-1-4503-8921-1
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3428029.3428042
Mindset, which refers to beliefs that people associate to themselves, is a fundamental source of bias in human thinking. There is strong evidence about the impact of mindset to personal development and academic achievement. Mindsets are typically measured in the intellectual domain, while mindset on, e.g., soft skills is researched significantly less. We investigated relationships between mindset and study performance, and changes in mindset during first year computer science studies in University of Turku, Finland. We used scales on intellectual domain, and new scales on social skills and creativity. Our results show that mindset in intelligence and mathematics got more fixed during first year studies, while mindset on computing remained growth oriented. Mindset on creativity was the most fixed of all scales. Fixed mindsets on social ability, creativity, and computing were moderately associated with study performance. We propose future directions on mindset as part of future assessment of learning.