Effects of Growth Mindsets on Academic Performance in Kinesiology

There is limited research surrounding the impacts of having a growth mindset in kinesiology. Having a growth mindset means someone sees challenges as something that they can grow and learn from. While someone with a fixed mindset would see challenges as something that might break down their confidence or make them look/feel inferior to their peers. The purpose of doing a study around this subject could give us an insight on the correlations between growth mindset and students success in Kinesiology. We predict that someone who has a growth mindset would have more success in the class. We also predict that mindsets are going to be favored more to the fixed side when considering the math category. Throughout the semester we had the students take 3 surveys. We used a modified ITI-SS, with additional questions to understand the student’s specific mindsets towards math, writing and computer skills.  We found, students’ general mindset decreased from 4.05 in the initial survey to 3.76 in the final survey, although this difference was not significant. Contrary to our hypothesis, mindsets towards computer skills and writing significantly decreased, indicating that students drifted toward a fixed mindset. At the end of the semester all mindset scores except for computer skills were above 3, indicating that students still had more of a growth mindset for each category. Math mindset was significantly lower than general mindset pre-semester, supporting our second hypothesis. These data indicate students’ mindsets were more fixed towards math and computer skills than in general.