Mindset in Education and Its Correlates: A Systematic Review of Meta-Analysis and a Meta-Meta-Analysis

In Education, professional life, and personal life, mindset is a ubiquitous term with several diverging definitions and dimensions (Dweck, 2012; Yin, 2021). In the present study in the educational context, we define mindset as an individuals’ beliefs about the malleability of human attributes (Lutz, 2022; Sassenberg & Vliek, 2019). In this way, mindset is theorized to shape motivation, goal orientation, responses to failure and learning behavior. According to Dweck´s mindset theory (Dweck, 2006), mindset has two dimensions: a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. The growth mindset describes the inner conviction that human characteristics can be developed and changed through, for example, one's own efforts and the help of others (Dweck, 2012, 2006). Innate abilities, talents and character are seen as starting point for development (Dweck, 2017). In contrast, the fixed mindset describes the inner conviction that human characteristics are unchangeable (Dweck, 2006). Behind this lies the belief that every person has certain characteristics, such as behaviors, beliefs, and abilities, and that these cannot be changed at will (Dweck, 2012, 2006; Sassenberg & Vliek, 2019). The growth mindset is proposed to be positively related to academic, behavioral and socioemotional outcomes, whereas a fixed mindset should be associated with less adaptive patterns (Dweck, 2006, 2012). There have been a host of primary studies investigating these effects and even several meta-analyses synthesize this association (Burnette et al., 2023; Macnamara & Burgoyne, 2023; Yeager & Dweck, 2020). However, these meta-analyses are somewhat inconclusive in how important mindset really is for students’ and teachers’ academic, behavioral, socioemotional, motivational and general cognitive outcomes. Furthermore, it is unclear which characteristics of the sample or study influence the strength of this association and the meta-analyses seem to vary in their methodological quality. Thus, we will conduct a preregistered, systematic review of meta-analyses in K-12 and tertiary education student and teachers and answer the following research questions: Research Question 1: To what extent do existing meta-analyses provide evidence supporting significant relations between mindset and students’ or teachers’ academic, behavioral, socioemotional, motivational, and general cognitive outcomes? Research Question 2: To what extent do these relationships vary by the characteristics of the meta-analyses, such as student samples, measurement characteristics, personality characteristics, and environmental characteristics? Research Question 3: How good is the quality of existing meta-analyses in the field? Is this quality related to, e.g., year of publication, sample size, and statistical error correction?