title: Reading intervention with a growth mindset approach improves children's skills.
abstract: Laboratory experiments have shown that parents who believe their child's abilities are fixed engage with their child in unconstructive, performance-oriented ways. We show that children of parents with such "fixed mindsets" have lower reading skills, even after controlling for the child's previous abilities and the parents' socioeconomic status. In a large-scale randomized field trial (Nclassrooms= 72; Nchildren= 1,587) conducted by public authorities, parents receiving a reading intervention were told about the malleability of their child's reading abilities and how to support their child by praising his/her effort rather than his/her performance. This low-cost intervention increased the reading and writing achievements of all participating children-not least immigrant children with non-Western backgrounds and children with low-educated mothers. As expected, effects were even bigger for parents who before the intervention had a fixed mindset.
authors.affiliation: Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark; TrygFonden's Centre for Child Research, Aarhus University, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark; sca@ps.au.dk.
authors.forename: Simon Calmar
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Andersen
authors.affiliation: TrygFonden's Centre for Child Research, Aarhus University, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark; Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.
authors.forename: Helena Skyt
authors.initials: HS
authors.lastname: Nielsen
mesh_terms: D000124:Achievement; D001290:Attitude; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003718:Denmark; D054242:Emigrants and Immigrants / Q000193:education / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation / Q000941:ethics / Q000502:physiology*; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D010290:Parents / Q000193:education / Q000523:psychology*; D011932:Reading
keywords: education; parent intervention; parental beliefs; randomized controlled trial; reading intervention