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A
well-educated citizenry is an economic and social necessity. Policy makers,
educators, and parents all over the world want students to understand and be
able to apply their knowledge of math, reading, and science. Yet improving
educational outcomes has proved elusive. Some countries, states and
municipalities have made great strides, but many continue to struggle. Educators
continue to debate what matters and what works.
In this
series of reports, we take a data-driven approach to consider a few of the most
active debates: Do mindsets matter? If so, to what extent? What teaching
practices work best? Does technology help? Our data comes from the Program for
International Student Assessment (PISA), administered by the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Broad in scale and scope, PISA covered more than
half a million students in 72 countries in 2015. What makes PISA so powerful is that it goes beyond the
numbers, asking students, principals, teachers, and parents a series of
questions about their practice, attitudes, behaviors, and resources.
By applying
advanced analytics and machine learning, we have identified factors that play a
critical role in student achievement. We will be publishing five regional
reports to share these findings: on Asia–Pacific; Europe; Latin America; the
Middle East and North Africa (MENA); and North America .
Here we summarize the findings that were most consistent across all five
regions: on the topics of mindsets and teaching practices.
Finding 1: Having the right mindsets matters
much more than socioeconomic background.
It is
hardly news that students’ attitudes and beliefs—what we term their
“mindsets”—influence their academic performance. But how much? To answer that
question, we identified the 100 most predictive variables from the PISA survey (out of more
than 1,000). We then sorted these into the following categories: home
environment, school resources and leadership, teachers and teaching, and
student mindsets and behaviors.
Our
conclusion: after controlling for all other factors, student mindsets are twice
as predictive of students’ PISA
scores than even their home environment and demographics (Exhibit 1). This
finding, and its magnitude, is consistent across all five regions, which
amplifies its importance.
Several
mindsets emerged as highly predictive of performance. Top of the list was the
ability to identify what motivation looks like in day-to-day life, what we call
“motivation calibration.” Students who can recognize that motivated students
prepare for class, do more than expected, and work to perfection outperform
those who do not by between 12 and 15 percent depending on their region. Similarly,
students with a “growth mindset”—those who believe they can succeed if they
work hard—performed 9 to 17 percent better than those with a “fixed
mindset”—those who believe their capabilities are static.
It was
particularly striking that several of these mindsets made the most difference
for students either in low performing schools or in lower socioeconomic quartiles.
In fact, for students in schools with low outcomes, having a well-calibrated
motivation mindset is equivalent to vaulting into a higher socioeconomic class.
This result was consistent across all regions. (Exhibit 2 – North American
example).
Mindsets,
of course, are not everything. They cannot compensate for all economic and
social disparities, and, in general, being richer rather than poorer remains a
great educational advantage. But the PISA
evidence shows that mindsets matter a great deal, particularly for those living
in the most challenging circumstances. So far, the research on this subject is
both nascent and predominantly US-based. Considering its importance,
establishing how mindsets can be shifted in a positive direction should be a
priority globally.
Finding 2: Students who receive a blend of
teacher-directed and inquiry-based instruction have the best outcomes.
There are
two dominant types of teaching practices. The first is “teacher-directed
instruction,” in which the teacher explains and demonstrates ideas, considers
questions, and leads classroom discussions. The second is “inquiry-based
teaching,” in which students are given a more prominent role in their own
learning—for example, by developing their own hypotheses and experiments.
We analyzed
the PISA results
to understand the relative impact of each of these practices. In all five
regions, when teachers took the lead, scores were generally higher, and the
more inquiry-based learning, the lower the scores. That sounds damning for
inquiry-based learning at first glance, but by digging deeper into the data, a
more interesting story is revealed: what works best is when the two styles work
together—specifically, with teacher-directed instruction in most or almost all
classes, and inquiry-based learning in some. This “sweet spot” is the same in
all five regions, suggesting there is something akin to a universal learning
style (Exhibit 3 - European Union example).
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