What are the stakes?
What shapes academic performance?
How can you cultivate change?

Sample School 2

Cultivating Classrooms

that improve student outcomes

Scroll down slowly to begin.

by focusing you on the

Learning Conditions

that have the largest influence on students’

Mindsets & Strategies

which shape students’

Academic Performance

Of all the outcomes schools measure, grades are the best indicators of whether or not a student will graduate from high school, enroll in and graduate from college, and live a long and prosperous life.

Students’ perceptions and beliefs about themselves and the work they are doing—Learning Mindsets—and the tools they have to help them—Learning Strategies—shape their performance in school.

Research shows that students with stronger Mindsets & Strategies have stronger Academic Performance and earn higher grades.

In fact, researchers found that students with strong Mindsets & Strategies earned more As and fewer Fs than those with weaker Mindsets & Strategies.

Compare the grade distributions below for students who reported…

How connected students feel to their classmates, how meaningful their work seems, and what they believe about their potential for success have a strong influence on their willingness to engage in learning.

Therefore, exploring students’ Mindsets & Strategies is key to understanding why they get the grades they do. These data reveal what is happening behind the behaviors and performance you see.

Select one of the categories above to get a sense of what students said about their Mindsets & Strategies.

Learning Mindsets are the attitudes or beliefs students have about themselves in relation to academic work and learning settings. Strong Learning Mindsets help students engage in more productive academic behaviors and persevere through challenging schoolwork, resulting in improved Academic Performance.

Measure	Change	Difference Score
Relevance to the Future	- 6	62
Self-efficacy	- 1	59
Identity Safety	- 2	56
Belonging	- 7	51
Academic Risk Taking	- 6	47
Growth Mindset	- 6	46
Agency	- 6	41

Learning Strategies are processes and tactics students employ to aid in the cognitive work of thinking, remembering, or learning. Effective Learning Strategies allow students to leverage Academic Behaviors to maximize learning.

Measure	Change	Difference Score
Organization/Time Management	- 4	66
Monitoring Strategies	- 5	53

Motivation is a student's willingness to work hard in class. Students’ reports on their level of Motivation are very predictive of their actual Academic Performance.

Disaggregation:

Measure	Change	Difference Score
Motivation	- 16	54

When reporting about themselves in one class, students say...

Expand All

I am motivated to work hard in class.

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While we have always known that the same student in two different classrooms can have completely different grades, it turns out those outcomes are not necessarily linked to that student’s ability, but to the Mindsets & Strategies fostered by the teacher in each class through the environment that teacher creates.

There are nine dimensions of a classroom that really matter for students’ Mindsets & Strategies. These are the Learning Conditions.

Select one of the Learning Conditions above to see just how much influence each has on the different Mindsets & Strategies.