Mentalidad de crecimiento en estudiantes de primero de bachillerato de Instituciones Educativas Públicas de la zona urbana del cantón Cuenca, 2023

Abstract

Mindset is a characteristic of non-cognitive human capital that can define not only students' academic success, but lifelong success. If a student has a Fixed Mindset, he will be limited in his academic development and could even drop out of his studies, while a student with a Growth Mindset will be motivated to overcome difficulties through new study strategies or by asking for help. The latter is a characteristic desired in students so that they can more easily overcome academic difficulties and socioeconomic structural problems. This research sought to implement an experimental design to promote the growth mindset in first-year high school students with “insufficient” and “elementary” academic achievements from 27 public educational institutions located in the urban area of the Cuenca canton. After this, the impact on the type of mindset of the students was measured pre and post experiment to relate it to socioeconomic and educational indicators through statistical tests. It was found that initially the students had a mixed mindset, which after the experiment had a statistically non-significant positive change towards a growth mindset. Furthermore, it was found that residence in a rural area is negatively associated with the students' mindset. On the other hand, the mother's educational level and the average monthly household income are positively related to the students' mindset, that is, the higher the mother's level of education/average household income, the higher the mindset value will be, leading them towards a growth mindset.