Mindset as a potential link between family background and high-school achievement

The link between students’ family background and their school achievement is well documented. The recent literature has also investigated how social and emotional skills and mindsets relate to educational outcomes. Here I examine how mindset—that is, whether students believe more in that intellectual abilities are fixed or capable of growth—is related to family background and school achievement in Norway. I find that students with higher-educated parents have lower levels of a fixed mindset on entering high school. I also estimate heterogeneity in this association using multilevel modeling. The predicted level of students’ fixed mindset is low for higher-performing middle-school students, irrespective of parents’ education. Furthermore, low middle-school performance predicts higher levels of a fixed mindset, particularly for students with lower-educated parents. A higher level of fixed mindset on entering high school is related to lower achievement after the first year. The results suggest that students’ belief in “natural talent” is a mechanism worthy of further investigation as it is more malleable than the mechanisms traditionally used to explain differences in academic performance according to family background.