Few educational theories have taken off in the mainstream like growth mindset has. Originally proposed by Carol Dweck of Stanford University, based on decades of psychological research, mindset theory quickly became a global phenomenon in schools.

Dweck’s suggestion that a student’s belief in their ability could strongly influence their attainment, along with their powers of persistence, was both plausible and desirable. However, it wasn’t long before researchers realised that the studies that had given rise to multiple growth-mindset interventions were difficult to replicate. Large-scale trials failed to live up to the promise.

The subsequent response of many in education was to dismiss growth mindset as an outright fad. But could the ease with which we dismissed mindset interventions actually be the reason why they didn’t work? Could the mindsets of teachers be part of the problem?

The latter is a question that David Yeager and colleagues set out to answer in a paper this year, Teacher mindsets help explain where a growth mindset intervention does and doesn’t work. The researchers explored how the mindsets of 368 maths teachers working in the US influenced pupils who undertook a short online growth-mindset intervention. Those students taught by teachers with a “fixed mindset” (who believe that intelligence and ability are innate) saw no effect from the growth-mindset intervention. However, those students taught by teachers with growth mindsets saw an improvement in their attainment in maths.

This study builds on the back of another, also conducted by Yeager and colleagues, in 2019. The earlier study showed that it’s not only teachers’ mindsets that may determine the success of these interventions - there is also a peer effect to consider. The researchers found that a short growth-mindset intervention was more likely to have an effect on attainment “when peer norms aligned with the messages of the intervention”.

This make sense. Learning doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You can experience a thoughtful session on developing a growth mindset, but if all your friends dismiss it and your teacher does not buy into it, then it stands to reason that it will not have the desired effect.

When many of us trialled growth-mindset interventions in our schools, did we really pay enough attention to the support factors that were bound to determine how far those interventions would go on to influence students’ self-belief?

It now seems likely that the mindsets of teachers and the attitudes of peers play a role in any impact. But I would further speculate that students being able to deploy effective study strategies (Dunlosky et al, 2013) and high-quality teaching - such as being taught an array of effective problem-solving strategies in maths - would also be necessary ingredients for success.

We are right to dismiss the idea that a short psychological intervention could solve all of our problems. That doesn’t mean we should dismiss the intervention itself at the first hint of trouble. Instead, we need to recognise that such interventions can be a meaningful part of a more complex, interrelated approach to improving teaching and learning.

Alex Quigley is national content manager at the Education Endowment Foundation

This article originally appeared in the 18 June 2021 issue under the headline “There might be something in the ‘fads’ after all”