Teaching a lay theory before college narrows achievement gaps at scale

Abstract

Previous experiments have shown that college students benefit when they understand that challenges in the transition to college are common and improvable and, thus, that early struggles need not portend a permanent lack of belonging or potential. Could such an approach-called a lay theory intervention-be effective before college matriculation? Could this strategy reduce a portion of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic achievement gaps for entire institutions? Three double-blind experiments tested this possibility. Ninety percent of first-year college students from three institutions were randomly assigned to complete single-session, online lay theory or control materials before matriculation (n > 9,500). The lay theory interventions raised first-year full-time college enrollment among students from socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds exiting a high-performing charter high school network or entering a public flagship university (experiments 1 and 2) and, at a selective private university, raised disadvantaged students' cumulative first-year grade point average (experiment 3). These gains correspond to 31-40% reductions of the raw (unadjusted) institutional achievement gaps between students from disadvantaged and nondisadvantaged backgrounds at those institutions. Further, follow-up surveys suggest that the interventions improved disadvantaged students' overall college experiences, promoting use of student support services and the development of friendship networks and mentor relationships. This research therefore provides a basis for further tests of the generalizability of preparatory lay theories interventions and of their potential to reduce social inequality and improve other major life transitions. inequality | behavioral science | field experiment | social psychology | lay theories

Nudging in education

“…Andersen and Nielsen (2016) find similar results on test scores of an intervention targeting parents of primary school children in Denmark. In contrast to these positive results, one of the implementations studied in Yeager et al (2016b) found no effect on college enrolment of a growth-mindset intervention targeted at secondary school students. The lack of effects is possibly due to their target population consisting of high school students at high performing schools who have already been admitted to college.…”

“…We note that the study by Paunesku et al (2015) potentially suffers from selection bias because as little as 3% of the students in participating schools are part of the study. However, other studies using online growth-mindset interventions have had almost complete coverage at participating schools and found similar results on grades, continued college enrolment or academic performance some time later (Yeager et al, 2016a;Yeager et al, 2016b;Bettinger, Ludvigsen, Rege, & Scolli, 2018). Bettinger et al (2018) showed that positive effects mainly arose for students who originally had a fixed mindset i.e.…”

“…21 Walton et al (2014) found positive effects on first year grade point average of both treatments for females in male-dominated fields. Yeager et al (2016b) implemented a large scale online social belonging intervention teaching participants that early struggels at university do not necessarily translate into a permanent lack of belonging. They found positive effects on college enrolment for US secondary school students from high performing schools who have been admitted to college.…”

Self-affirmation facilitates minority middle schoolers' progress along college trajectories

“…Third, research suggests that psychological processes have an important role in how people respond to adversity. A sense of optimism, purpose, and belonging can improve long-term educational and health outcomes even among the economically disadvantaged (8)(9)(10)(11)(12). The importance of psychological processes in no way lessens the imperative to reduce poverty, discrimination, and other structural disadvantages.…”

“…Randomized experiments conducted during transitions to middle school (13)(14)(15), high school, and college (11,12,16,17) have shown that brief interventions that support adaptive psychological processes improve grades and school retention. They do so by encouraging students to reflect on core values (13)(14)(15), by assuring them of their belonging in school (11,12), by highlighting the personal relevance of academic coursework (16), or by cultivating the belief that intelligence is malleable rather than fixed (11,17). No study, however, has shown that a psychological process altered at one transition has persistent and direct causal effects on outcomes at later transitions and in new institutions years later, and, if this does occur, how.…”