fixed mindset

The present study investigated the relationship among teachers 'mindsets and their perceptions of students' behavior, learning, and achievement, their interpretations of students 'behavior, and their strategies to increase students' motivation through a qualitative approach and a descriptive phenomenological design.The target population of this study includes all female primary school teachers in District 1 of Yazd city. Initially, 18 teachers volunteered to participate in the study, according to the call. Then, they completed mindset questionnaire and after evaluating the answers and determining teachers’ mindset, 5 teachers were purposefully selected for a more profound and more extensive study. The data were collected using Dweck's Mindset Questionnaire (2000) and Semi-structured interviews. Content analysis was used to analyze the data and the results showed that the relationship between teachers 'mindsets and their perceptions of students' behavior, learning, and progress could be traced through the categories such as fixed mindset's teacher, growth mindset's teacher, and six factors including stereotypes, performance interpretation, evaluation, instruction, motivation, and responsibility. In general, it can be said that teachers 'mindset affect the way, they interpret students' behavior, learning, and success, it is influential on teachers' instructions, evaluations, and responsibilities in the teaching process as well as the type of activities that they use to increase students' motivation. Furthermore, the results showed that teachers' mindsets are intertwined with cultural assumptions; and teachers can be made aware of cultural challenges by increasing their level of knowledge and modifications of their mindsets.

The present study was conducted to investigate the comparative impacts of three types of EFL teachers' mindsets on EFL learners' mindsets. The participants of the study were English Translation undergraduate students (both female and male with the age ranging of 18-35) who were selected according to convenience non-random sampling from three classes of English Grammar 1 at both Islamic Azad Universities of Karaj and Shahriyar. The total number of students in each class was 30. The course lasted 16 successive sessions. Participants were assigned into three experimental groups. At the outset, a Mindset Assessment Profile (MAP) adopted from Mindset works, INC (2002-2012) on a scale of disagree a lot to agree a lot was administered among participants in all three experimental groups. The researchers provided interventions in terms of fixed, growth, and mixed mindsets to teach English grammar. At the end of the course, the same Mindset Assessment Profile (MAP) as the one administered in the pretest phase was administered among participants in all three groups and it was demonstrated that the EFL teacher’s type of mindset can significantly influence EFL learners’ mindsets. Consequently, it was determined that helping students adopt growth mindset hinges on raising teachers’ awareness about the importance of their own mindsets as well as helping them to grow their mindsets. This study includes a variety of instructional implications for both EFL teachers and EFL learners.

As a possible and influential factor in academic success, student growth mindset has recently received attention. However, the number of the studies concerning the effects of growth mindset on language skills in the context of Iran is not considerable and no study has specifically examined the influence of growth mindset on Iranian EFL learners’ vocabulary development. To fill this gap, this study was conducted in order to investigate if the intervention has any significant effects on Iranian EFL learners’ vocabulary development compared to those who do not receive such intervention. A quasi-experimental design in the form of pre- and posttest was used in this study. To homogenize the participants in terms of their proficiency, OQPT was used. Subsequently, out of 78 learners, sixty Iranian intermediate language learners were randomly assigned into two groups of control group receiving conventional vocabulary training and experimental group receiving a growth mindset intervention besides the conventional method for vocabulary learning. Vocabulary knowledge of the students was tested with the help of a vocabulary knowledge test that was specifically prepared and developed by researchers. To investigate if using growth mindset intervention had positive effects on learning English vocabulary by the learners in each control and experimental groups, two sets of paired-samples t-test were conducted. Afterwards, to explore which method had been more effective, the mean scores of the posttests of the control and experimental groups were compared by executing an independent two-sample t-test. The results revealed that implementing growth mindset intervention had positive effects on vocabulary development of EFL learners. Accordingly, this study has pedagogical implications for EFL teachers and students, as well as material designers.