Academic Tenacity for Postsecondary Readiness

REL Northwest

Eight Research Alliances Alaska State Policy Research Alliance Northwest Tribal Educators Alliance Idaho Statewide System of Recognition, Accountability, and Support Alliance Montana Data Use Alliance Oregon College and Career Readiness Research Alliance Oregon Leadership Network Alliance Road Map for Education Results Project Washington ESD Network Alliance

Research Alliance

“A group of stakeholders who share a specific educational concern and agree to work together to learn more about the concern so that they can make sound decisions to improve education outcomes.” (REL Performance Work Statement, April 2011)

Welcome and introductions Behind the buzz

Context: academic tenacity for postsecondary readiness The three constructs of academic tenacity Stories of tenacious students

Inspiring interventions Practices to promote academic tenacity Evidence of results

Discussion: What can I do at my school? Reflection and wrap-up

Agenda

Definition used in Oregon: “The level of preparation a student needs in order to enroll and succeed– without remediation–in a credit bearing general education course at a postsecondary institution.”

Source: Conley, 2007

Three important factors: Academic preparedness

College knowledge

Academic tenacity

Defining Postsecondary Readiness

“Academic tenacity is about the mindsets and skills that allow students to look beyond short-term concerns to longer-term or higher-order goals, and withstand challenges and setbacks to persevere toward these goals.”

Source: Dweck, Walton, & Cohen, 2014

What Is Academic Tenacity?

Three constructs are particularly important for academic tenacity:

Mindsets and goals

Values, identity, and social belonging

Self-regulation and self-control

What Is Academic Tenacity?

Mindsets and goals: Oksana

Mindsets and goals

Fixed mindset

“I failed because

I’m dumb.”

“Maybe I need a new

strategy.”

Growth mindset

Mindsets and goals

Fixed mindset

You’re better at art than at

math.

You put a lot of work into that project.

Growth mindset

Mindsets and goals

Fixed mindset Growth mindset

Performance goals

Mastery or learning goals

Mindsets and goals

Fixed mindset

“I failed because

I’m dumb.”

“Maybe I need a new

strategy.”

Growth mindset

Performance goals

Mastery or learning goals

You’re better at art than at

math.

You put a lot of work into that project.

Values, identity, and social belonging: Jerry

Values, identity, and social belonging

Relationships with teachers

and peers Sense of social

belonging

Values, identity, and social belonging

Relationships with teachers

and peers Sense of social

belonging

Long-term motivation

and engagement

Improved grades and

achievement

Self-regulation and self-control: Susanna

Self-regulation and self-control

Tune out distractions and temptations

Stay on task

Navigate obstacles

Self-regulation and self-control

Tune out distractions and temptations

Stay on task

Navigate obstacles

Mindfulness

Stress management

Which of the three constructs of academic tenacity do you think this intervention is

targeting?

Mindsets and goals Values, identity, and social belonging

Self-regulation and self-control

Activity

Students picture a safe place where they feel protected and in control: a caring, supportive, and encouraging place. Before a task, students spend a few minutes breathing deeply and imagining their safe space.

Mindsets and goals Values, identity, and social belonging

Self-regulation and self-control

Activity

Mindsets and goals Values, identity, and social belonging

Self-regulation and self-control

Activity

Students picture a safe place where they feel protected and in control: a caring, supportive, and encouraging place. Before a task, students spend a few minutes breathing deeply and imagining their safe space.

Students create a list of personal values that are important to them. They choose the value that is most important and spend 15 minutes writing about why this value is important to them.

Mindsets and goals Values, identity, and social belonging

Self-regulation and self-control

Activity

Mindsets and goals Values, identity, and social belonging

Self-regulation and self-control

Activity

Students create a list of personal values that are important to them. They choose the value that is most important and spend 15 minutes writing about why this value is important to them.

How Does Academic Tenacity Relate to Postsecondary Readiness?

“Educational interventions and initiatives that target [academic tenacity] can have transformative effects on students’ experience and achievement in school, improving core academic outcomes such as GPA and test scores months and even years later.” — Dweck et al., 2014

In this study online growth-mindset and sense-of-purpose interventions were given to 1,594 students in 13 geographically diverse high schools. Both interventions were intended to help students persist when they experienced academic difficulty. The interventions were most beneficial for low-performing students. Among students at risk of dropping out of high school (a third of the sample), each intervention raised students’ semester grade point averages (GPA) in core academic courses and increased the rate of satisfactory performance in core courses by 6.4 percentage points.

Students read an article describing the brain’s ability to restructure itself through effort. The article focuses on the implications for students’ potential to become more intelligent through study and practice. This message is reinforced through several writing exercises. In the first, students summarize the scientific findings in their own words. In the second, they read about a hypothetical student who is becoming discouraged and starting to think of himself as “not smart enough” to do well in school. Students are asked to advise this target student based on what they have read.

Paunesku, D., Walton, G. M., Romero, C., Smith, E. N., Yeager, D. S., & Dweck, C. S. (2015).

An intervention designed to help low-income and minority eighth-graders imagine “possible selves” increased their success in moving toward APS goals: academic initiative, standardized test scores, and improved grades. Depression, absences, and in-school misbehavior also declined. The effects were still present during a two-year follow-up.

Oyserman, D., Bybee, D., & Terry, K. (2006) Students take part in a 10-session

workshop in which they are asked to imagine a future “possible self,” list the obstacles they might encounter to realizing that self, and strategies they can use to overcome the obstacles.

Students picture a safe place where they feel protected and in control: a caring, supportive, and encouraging place. Before a task, students spend a few minutes breathing deeply and imagining their safe space.

The authors evaluated a small-group counseling intervention, Student Success Skills, provided to 53 fourth- and fifth-grade African-American students in an inner-city environment. Compared with the control group, students who received the treatment reported significant changes in metacognitive skill, feelings of connectedness to school, and executive function.

Lemberger, M. E., & Clemens, E. V. (2012).

What are you doing in your own school to promote academic tenacity?

What would you like to do? What questions do you have?

Mindsets and goals Values, identity, and

social belonging

Self-regulation and self-control

Key characteristics and behaviors of academically tenacious students: Belong academically and socially See school as relevant to their future Work hard and can postpone immediate pleasure Do not get derailed by intellectual or social

difficulties Seek out challenges Remain engaged over the long haul

Research suggests that academic tenacity is

malleable

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Conley, D. T. (2005). College knowledge: What it really takes for students to succeed and what we can do to get them ready. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED496372

Conley, D. T. (2007). Redefining college readiness. Eugene, OR: Educational Policy Improvement Center. http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED539251

Dweck, C. S., Walton, G. M., & Cohen, G. L. (2014). Academic tenacity: Mindsets and skills that promote long-term learning. Seattle, WA: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Retrieved September 1, 2015, from https://ed.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/manual/dweck-walton-cohen-2014.pdf

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Lemberger, M. E., & Clemens, E. V. (2012). Connectedness and self-regulation as constructs of the Student Success Skills program in inner-city African American elementary school students. Journal of Counseling & Development, 90(4), 450–458. http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ990252

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Oyserman, D., Bybee, D., & Terry, K. (2006). Possible selves and academic outcomes: How and when possible selves impel action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(1), 188–204.

Paunesku, D., Walton, G. M., Romero, C., Smith, E. N., Yeager, D. S., & Dweck, C. S. (2015). Mind-set interventions are a scalable treatment for academic underachievement. Psychological Science, 26(6), 784–793.

Roderick, M., Coca, V., & Nagaoka, J. (2011). Potholes on the road to college: High school effects in shaping urban students’ participation in college application, four-year college enrollment, and college match. Sociology of Education, 84(3), 178–211. http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ929878

Walton, G. M., & Cohen, G. L. (2011). A brief social-belonging intervention improves academic and health outcomes of minority students. Science, 331(6023), 1447–1451.

Warburton, E. C., Bugarin, R., & Nuñez, A.-M. (2001). Briding the gap: Academeic preparation and postsecondary success of first-generation students (Statistical Analysis Report, NCES 2001-153). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED456168

Wiley, A., Wyatt, J., & Camara, W. J. (2011). The development of a multidimensional college readiness index (Research Report No. 2010-3). New York, NY: College Board.

References, continued

For more information, please contact:

Shannon Davidson (shannon.davidson@educationnorthwest.org)

Thank you