Changes in physiological arousal during an arithmetic task: profiles of elementary school students and their associations with mindset, task performance and math grade.

Task-related change in physiological arousal is suggested to reflect active involvement with the task. While studies often examine such task-related changes in arousal as averaged across the entire task, the present study focused on temporal changes in arousal during a task. More specifically, we investigated changes in elementary school students' physiological arousal during an arithmetic task and associations between these changes and students' mindset, performance on the task, and math grades. We used a person-oriented approach to analyze the tonic electrodermal activity of 86 fourth graders, recorded while they were working on an arithmetic task. With model-based clustering of students' on-task electrodermal activity, we identified three groups of students with differing temporal dynamics of physiological arousal during the task: Increasing Arousal, Decreasing Arousal and Decreasing and Increasing Arousal. The Decreasing Arousal profile contained more students classified as holding a Fixed Mindset Tendency than would be expected if physiological profile membership and mindset tendency were independent. The Increasing Arousal profile performed better on the task than the Decreasing Arousal profile. No association was found with math grades. These results provide a new insight into individual differences in temporal patterns of on-task physiological arousal.

Development of associations between elementary school students' mindsets and attentional neural processing of feedback in an arithmetic task.

The aim of this study was to examine the development of the associations between elementary school students' mindsets and the attentional neural processing of positive and negative feedback in math. For this, we analyzed data collected twice from 100 Finnish elementary school students. During the autumn semesters of their 3rd and 4th grade, the participants' general intelligence mindset and math ability mindset were measured with a questionnaire, and their brain responses elicited by performance-relevant feedback were recorded during an arithmetic task. We found that students' fixed mindsets about general intelligence and math ability were associated with greater attention allocated to positive feedback as indicated by a larger P300. These associations were driven by the effects of mindsets on attention allocation to positive feedback in grade 4. Additionally, 4th graders' more fixed general intelligence mindset was marginally associated with greater attention allocated to negative feedback. In addition, the effects of both mindsets on attention allocation to feedback were marginally stronger when the children were older. The present results, although marginal in the case of negative feedback and mainly driven by effects in grade 4, are possibly a reflection of the greater self-relevance of feedback stimuli for students with a more fixed mindset. It is also possible that these findings reflect the fact that, in evaluative situations, mindset could influence stimulus processing in general. The marginal increase in the effects of mindsets as children mature may reflect the development of coherent mindset meaning systems during elementary school years.

Empirical model of teachers' neuroplasticity knowledge, mindset, and epistemological belief system.

Educational research has shown that teachers' knowledge and beliefs are two important variables that significantly affect their pedagogical practice and decisions. Relying on the premise that knowledge is superior to beliefs in a pure epistemic dimension and rooted in the previous empirical studies, we examined the hypothesis that teachers' knowledge of neuroplasticity affects their epistemological belief system mediated by mindset. Using a survey consisting of established scales about these variables, we collected data from a sample of 345 teachers. Structural equation modeling was performed to test the hypothesis. Results showed that the path coefficients (direct effects) from teachers' knowledge of neuroplasticity to their mindset and epistemological belief system were statistically significant. In other words, we found that teachers with a higher score in the knowledge of neuroplasticity had a growth mindset and a sophisticated epistemological belief system. Teachers' knowledge of neuroplasticity also had an indirect effect on their epistemological belief system mediated by mindset. This result has a conceptual contribution to the literature because it suggests that teachers' knowledge of neuroplasticity is a predicting variable for mindset and epistemological belief system. In practice, it provides us with a tool for developing teachers' growth mindset and sophisticated epistemological beliefs.

Mindsets and Neural Mechanisms of Automatic Reactions to Negative Feedback in Mathematics in Elementary School Students.

Neuroscientific research regarding mindsets is so far scarce, especially among children. Moreover, even though research indicates the importance of domain specificity of mindsets, this has not yet been investigated in neuroscientific studies regarding implicit beliefs. The purpose of this study was to examine general intelligence and math ability mindsets and their relations to automatic reactions to negative feedback in mathematics in the Finnish elementary school context. For this, event-related potentials of 97 elementary school students were measured during the completion of an age-appropriate math task, where the participants received performance-relevant feedback throughout the task. Higher growth mindset was marginally associated with a larger P300 response and significantly associated with a smaller later peaking negative-going waveform. Moreover, with the domain-specific experimental setting, we found a higher growth mindset regarding math ability, but not general intelligence, to be associated with these brain responses elicited by negative feedback regarding errors in math. This suggests that it might be important to address domain-specific and even academic-domain-specific beliefs in addition to general mindsets in research and practice.

Peer Feedback Reflects the Mindset and Academic Motivation of Learners.

Given that little is known how peer feedback reflects adolescents' academic well-being in different cultures, this study investigates, by means of multiple-group structural equation modeling (SEM), the influence of peer feedback on the mindset and academic motivation of Chinese (N = 992) and Finnish (N = 870) students in the fourth to the ninth school grades. Within this investigation, we also explore the culture-invariant and culture-dependent nature of student feedback, mindset and academic motivation. The results indicate that the way students praise their peers in their feedback primes and modifies their mindsets and academic motivation. Person-focused praise reflects a fixed mindset and negative academic motivation (i.e., avoidance), whereas process-focused praise undermines negative academic motivation. The pupils in the two samples had growth mindsets. However, the Finnish students preferred to bestow neutral praise and to be more negative with regard to their academic motivation whereas the Chinese students favored process- and person-focused praise, the former reflecting not only their growth mindset but also their positive academic motivation (i.e., trying).

The Role of Digital School-Home Communication in Teacher Well-Being.

Well-functioning communication is crucial in all work communities. A respectful and trusty partnership between parents and teachers in schools is essential not only for pupils but also for the well-being of the whole organization. Communication is at the heart of such a partnership. Although most parent-teacher communication nowadays takes place on digital platforms, not much is known about the specific role of digital communication (DC) in building parent-teacher partnerships. In an attempt to find out we asked 400 Finnish parents and 80 teachers about their experiences of communicating digitally and the kind of matters they discussed, and how they thought feedback on pupils should be expressed. The data was content-analyzed. Three categories related to DC content were identified: study-related matters, behavioral issues, and sensitive issues. Parental and teachers' expectations of how pupil feedback should be expressed also fell into three categories: a good balance of encouraging and corrective feedback, more encouraging feedback, and a constant emphasis on the child's weaknesses. These results have research and practical implications for teacher well-being.

Adolescents' implicit theories predict desire for vengeance after peer conflicts: correlational and experimental evidence.

Why do some adolescents respond to interpersonal conflicts vengefully, whereas others seek more positive solutions? Three studies investigated the role of implicit theories of personality in predicting violent or vengeful responses to peer conflicts among adolescents in Grades 9 and 10. They showed that a greater belief that traits are fixed (an entity theory) predicted a stronger desire for revenge after a variety of recalled peer conflicts (Study 1) and after a hypothetical conflict that specifically involved bullying (Study 2). Study 3 experimentally induced a belief in the potential for change (an incremental theory), which resulted in a reduced desire to seek revenge. This effect was mediated by changes in bad-person attributions about the perpetrators, feelings of shame and hatred, and the belief that vengeful ideation is an effective emotion-regulation strategy. Together, the findings illuminate the social-cognitive processes underlying reactions to conflict and suggest potential avenues for reducing violent retaliation in adolescents.