This investigation employed a longitudinal design to examine the influence of a one-shot growth mindset intervention on ninth-graders' implicit beliefs about intelligence and related achievement goals in four different samples. The intervention conformed to characteristics of 'wise interventions'. Participants' incremental beliefs about…

This 2-year prospective study aimed to examine the predictive role of students' achievement goals (mastery-approach and performance-avoidance) on socioemotional adjustment in high school by assessing the potential mediating contribution of academic motivations. A total of 407 high school students (46% boys) were surveyed each year in Secondary 2…

The psychometric qualities of the six- and eight-item implicit theories of intelligence scales that Dweck suggested were compared using a confirmatory factor analysis with data from 239 gifted students (100 students in Grades 5-7, 139 students in Grades 8-11). The results indicate that the six-item scale fits the data better than the eight-item…

Students' beliefs that success in science depends on exceptional talent negatively impact their motivation to learn. For example, such beliefs have been shown to be a major factor steering students away from taking science and math courses in high school and college. In the present study, we tested a novel story-based instruction that models how…

Students' social goals--reasons for engaging in interpersonal relationships with peers-are consequential for students' interactions with their peers at school and for their well-being. Despite the salience of peer relationships during adolescence, research on social goals is generally lacking compared with academic goals, and it is unknown how…

This longitudinal study builds on research addressing changes in achievement goal orientations (AG) across the transition to middle school. We had two objectives. The first was to identify and describe different development trajectories of AG (mastery, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance) from the last year of elementary school (Grade…