Growth mindset to be topic of January Steps to Leaps' Lunch and Learn

PERTS Growth Mindset for College Students was implemented successfully as part of student orientation during 2019 Boiler Gold Rush. Craig Johnson, director of orientation programs for Student Success, will speak about PERTS (Project for Education Research that Scales) and Growth Mindset for the Steps to Leaps Lunch and Learn at noon Thursday (Jan. 23) in Krach Leadership Center, Room 230.

Johnson will talk about the 30-minute PERTS module that was incorporated during BGR. More than 7,000 students completed the PERTS module through their pre-arrival homework. PERTS is an applied research center at Stanford University that helps educators apply evidence-based strategies in order to advance educational excellence and equity on a large scale. They believe that properly scaling educational research can empower schools to reduce inequality and create better experiences for students and teachers.

“At the Lunch and Learn, we'll share an activity that we used with our Boiler Gold Rush student leaders as a way to introduce the concept of growth mindset,” Johnson says.

Growth Mindset for College Students is an evidence-based program designed to increase college students’ academic motivation, resilience and achievement. It takes aim at the common misconception that intelligence is fixed — a pernicious misconception that erodes students’ motivation and makes them less likely to persist and succeed when they encounter academic difficulties.

“Growth mindset, in a lot of ways, comes down to praising effort,” Johnson says. “Growth mindset is basically telling people that they can become better at something with hard work and effort.”

The PERTS module teaches students about functions of the brain and gives them a chance to share their own stories and advice with incoming students who will arrive on Purdue’s campus the following year.

“It’s an opportunity for students to learn, but then also for them to give back,” Johnson says. “The module includes some intentional practices to open up students’ eyes to see that college is going to be hard, for sure. But it’s not impossible. Students learn they can be here and succeed.”

Also known as “abundance thinking,” growth mindset fits into the construct of the Steps to Leaps program aimed at bolstering student success by improving students’ attitudes regarding how to tackle college and the challenges they may face both inside and outside the classroom.

“It is about praising effort versus praising success,” Johnson says. “Instead of saying to a student, ‘Oh, you're so smart. You're the smartest person in the room,’ an educator can say, ‘I saw you work really, really hard on this, and I can see that you're successful as a result of that.’"

The PERTS module paved the groundwork for incoming students to understand that they would hear more about the growth mindset concept throughout their college experience.

PERTS data indicates that before intervention, 53% of students reported thinking with a growth mindset, but 65% students reported thinking in a growth mindset after the intervention. There was a 12 percentage point increase of students who were thinking differently as a result of participating in the PERTS module.

Attendees at the January Steps to Leaps Lunch and Learn will take away a tangible growth mindset activity that can be completed with students or staff members in their respective offices or departments. Attendees also will gain insight into what students saw in their pre-arrival and on-site experiences during Purdue’s orientation program. The hope is that attendees will continue the Steps to Leaps conversation across campus.

“The Steps to Leaps program is important to continue throughout the college experience and not just as a focus in a 30-minute module at orientation,” Johnson says.

Registration for the Steps to Leaps Lunch and Learn about growth mindset is available online. For more information, email stepstoleaps@purdue.edu.

The Steps to Leaps initiative focused on student resiliency and well-being is co-led by Beth McCuskey, vice provost for student life, and Jenna Rickus, associate vice provost for teaching and learning, under the care and direction of the Office of the Provost. Steps to Leaps is aligned with long-term University goals under the Provost Road Map for Transformative Undergraduate Education. As a collaborative effort, Steps to Leaps was created by staff along with students to foster lifelong habits and promote a growth mindset in the areas of well-being, leadership, impact, network building and grit. Steps to Leaps offers goal setting, action planning, worksheets, short motivational videos and more for self-assessment or facilitator-led assessments to help students celebrate their strengths while learning paths to improvement.