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Decades of research show that when people view abilities as being malleable with potential for development (i.e., hold a growth mindset), rather than viewing them as being fixed and unchanging (i.e., hold a fixed mindset; Dweck, 1999; Molden & Dweck, 2006), it benefits performance goals (Burnette et al., 2013) and psychological well-being (Lee et al., 2019). Beyond an individual level, more recent research is showing that when educators hold growth mindsets about intellectual abilities, their students benefit academically and psychologically (see Canning et al., 2019; Yeager et al., 2019). Social cognition research has consistently shown that people generally struggle with failure (see Eskreis-Winkler & Fishbach, 2019 for a review). People experience cognitive and motivational barriers (e.g., confronting a threat to the ego or not attending to pertinent information) when faced with failure because people do not usually expect to fail when undertaking a task (Eskreis-Winkler & Fishbach, 2022). One possible way to overcome these obstacles is to adopt a growth-oriented mindset about failure, specifically by viewing failures as opportunities for development rather than debilitating. Given that educators’ mindsets have the potential to impact students, should they be encouraged to adopt practices in their classroom that convey a growth mindset and facilitate students’ actual growth?(e.g., providing feedback and restructuring course materials) (Murphy et al. 2021). However, people generally are aversive to making an effort and avoid additional cognitive costs when possible (e.g., Kool et al., 2010), though there are some notable exceptions (see Frömer et al., 2021). Given the growing concern of burnout among educators (Walker, 2021), encouraging them to do more work seems unfeasible in the long term. Research suggests that people may prefer some effort over no effort at all, and engaging in some effortful tasks may actually reduce mental fatigue (Milyavskaya et al., 2021). Understanding and implementing this potential payoff of doing more but feeling less burnt out would benefit educators. We propose that when educators hold growth (vs. fixed) mindset beliefs about failure (i.e., believing that failure helps them improve and grow rather than impairs them), they are more likely to perceive their job as rewarding through their reported burnout and their perception of student engagement. Thus, we expect educators who hold growth (vs. fixed) mindset beliefs about failure will implement more growth-oriented mindset classroom practices, report lower burnout, and perceive higher student engagement. We also expect that educators who hold growth (vs. fixed) mindset about failure are also likely to implement more growth-oriented mindset practices, which in turn is expected to reduce reported burnout. Similarly, educators who hold growth (vs. fixed) mindset about failure are also likely to implement more growth-oriented mindset practices, which in turn is expected to increase perceived student engagement. Study 1 tests this model through data collected from faculty members. |
