📄 social_science

Unpacking the Differential Effects of Growth Mindset on Mathematics Academic Achievement Between Competitive and Regular Students

This study utilizes multi-group structural equation modeling to reveal that while teacher support fosters growth mindset in both competitive and regular students, the impact of growth mindset on mathematics achievement differs significantly: for regular students, it operates entirely through indirect psychological pathways, whereas for competitive students, it also exerts a direct positive effect on academic scores.

Original authors: Qiwei Qian, Zheng Wu, Wenkang Du

Published 2026-07-06

📖 5 min read🧠 Deep dive

CC BY 4.0

Original authors: Qiwei Qian, Zheng Wu, Wenkang Du

Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). ✨ This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer

The Big Picture: Two Different Math Worlds

Imagine the world of math learning as a massive gym. Inside, there are two distinct groups of people training:

The Regulars: Students who attend standard math classes, do their homework, and take regular tests.
The Olympians: Students who have been selected for intense, high-level math competition training (like Math Olympiads). They train harder, face tougher problems, and live in a high-pressure environment.

The researchers wanted to know: Does believing that "your brain can grow like a muscle" (a "Growth Mindset") help both groups get better at math in the exact same way?

The Main Characters in the Story

To understand the results, we need to meet the cast of characters the study tracked:

Teacher Support: The coach cheering you on, giving helpful feedback, and making you feel safe to try.
Growth Mindset: The belief that you aren't born smart or dumb; you can get smarter if you work at it.
Math Anxiety: The sweaty-palmed, "I'm going to fail" fear that freezes your brain.
Self-Efficacy: The quiet confidence that says, "I can actually solve this problem."
Learning Attitude: How much you actually like or value the process of learning math.
Math Scores: The final result on the test.

The Experiment: How They Did It

The researchers surveyed 798 eighth-grade students (320 Olympians and 478 Regulars). They asked them about their teachers, their beliefs, their fears, and their confidence. They then compared these answers to the students' actual scores on a standardized city-wide math exam.

They used a sophisticated statistical tool (like a complex map-reading system) to trace exactly how one factor led to another.

The Key Findings: What the Map Revealed

1. The Coach Matters for Everyone

Finding: Whether you are a Regular or an Olympian, having a supportive teacher makes you more likely to believe your brain can grow.
The Analogy: Think of Teacher Support as fertilizer. It helps the "Growth Mindset" plant sprout in the soil of any student's mind. It doesn't matter if you are in a small garden (Regular class) or a high-tech greenhouse (Olympiad training); the fertilizer works the same way.

2. The "Regular" Path: The Detour Route

Finding: For Regular students, believing your brain can grow does not directly make your test scores go up. Instead, it works like a relay race with three runners:

Step 1: Believing you can grow makes you less anxious (less fear).
Step 2: It makes you feel more confident (self-efficacy).
Step 3: It makes you like math more (better attitude).
Result: These three feelings then lead to better scores.
The Analogy: For Regular students, Growth Mindset is like a key that unlocks a door, but it doesn't open the treasure chest directly. You have to walk through the hallway of "less fear," "more confidence," and "better attitude" to finally get the treasure (the high score).

3. The "Olympian" Path: The Express Lane

Finding: For Competitive students, the story is different. Their Growth Mindset does directly boost their scores, in addition to working through the relay race.
The Analogy: For Olympians, Growth Mindset is like a turbo-boost button. While they still get the benefits of less fear and more confidence, their belief that "I can improve" also gives them a direct, super-charged push to keep grinding through hard problems and get better results immediately. Because they are in a high-pressure environment, simply believing they can improve seems to translate directly into the stamina needed to solve difficult problems.

4. The "Confidence" Factor is Stronger for Olympians

Finding: While both groups have confidence, Self-Efficacy (the belief "I can do this specific task") is a much stronger predictor of high scores for the Olympians than for the Regulars.
The Analogy: Imagine a mountain climb.

For the Regulars, having a positive attitude and low fear gets them to the top.
For the Olympians, who are climbing a much steeper, scarier mountain, having the specific belief that "I have the strength to climb this rock" is the single most important thing. Their growth mindset fuels this specific confidence, which then drives their success.

5. The "Attitude" Factor is Stronger for Regulars

Finding: Growth Mindset improved the "Learning Attitude" (how much they enjoyed math) much more for Regular students than for Olympians.
The Analogy: For Regular students, believing they can grow makes math feel like a fun adventure. For Olympians, math is already a high-stakes job; their attitude is less about "enjoyment" and more about "survival and performance," so the mindset boost doesn't change their feelings about math as much as it does for the Regulars.

What This Means (In Plain English)

The study concludes that one size does not fit all.

For Regular Students: To help them get better at math, teachers should focus on reducing fear and building a positive attitude. Telling them "you can grow" works by making them feel safer and more confident.
For Competitive Students: They are already in a high-pressure zone. For them, "you can grow" works by giving them the direct grit to keep going and the specific confidence to tackle hard problems. However, because they are under so much pressure, teachers need to be careful not to just talk about "growth" but also help them build that specific, rock-solid confidence in their ability to solve the problem at hand.

The Bottom Line: A supportive teacher helps everyone believe they can improve. But once that belief is there, it travels down different roads depending on how intense the student's learning environment is.

Technical Summary: Unpacking the Differential Effects of Growth Mindset on Mathematics Academic Achievement Between Competitive and Regular Students

Problem Statement
While the relationship between growth mindset and academic achievement is well-documented, existing research often treats students as a homogeneous group, potentially masking critical intergroup differences. Specifically, there is a lack of comparative investigation into how psychological mechanisms linking growth mindset to mathematics achievement operate differently between "competitive students" (those engaged in intensive Mathematical Olympiad training) and "regular students." Furthermore, the role of teacher support as an antecedent to growth mindset and its interaction with these distinct learning contexts remains under-explored. This study addresses the gap in understanding whether the high-pressure, performance-oriented environment of competitive mathematics training reshapes the cognitive and psychological pathways through which growth mindset influences academic outcomes.

Methodology
The study employed a quantitative, cross-sectional design utilizing Multi-Group Structural Equation Modeling (MGSEM) to analyze data from 798 eighth-grade students in China.

Participants: The sample consisted of 320 competitive students (participating in extracurricular Mathematical Olympiad training) and 478 regular students from the same 8 schools, ensuring control over school-level variables.
Measures:
- Teacher Support: Assessed via 8 items focusing on cognitive support (e.g., encouraging exploration of solutions).
- Growth Mindset: Measured using 4 items based on Dweck's implicit theories of intelligence.
- Mediators: Mathematics anxiety (6 items), Mathematics Self-Efficacy (8 items), and Learning Attitude (7 items).
- Outcome: Mathematics academic achievement was operationalized using scores from a standardized, city-wide unified final examination.
Procedure: Data were collected via anonymous questionnaires during regular school activities. The analysis involved:
1. Descriptive statistics and correlation analysis.
2. Independent-samples t-tests to compare group means.
3. Measurement invariance testing (configural, metric, scalar, and structural) to ensure cross-group comparability.
4. MGSEM to test direct and indirect paths, with gender, family income, and mid-term scores controlled as covariates.
5. Bias-corrected Bootstrap methods (5,000 resamples) to test mediation effects and cross-group differences in indirect paths.

Key Results
The MGSEM results revealed both shared mechanisms and significant heterogeneity between the two groups:

Teacher Support and Growth Mindset: Teacher support significantly and positively predicted growth mindset in both groups, with no significant difference in the strength of this path ( $\beta_C = 0.635$ , $\beta_R = 0.534$ ).
Mediating Mechanisms: Growth mindset indirectly influenced mathematics achievement through three parallel paths for both groups: reducing mathematics anxiety, enhancing self-efficacy, and shaping learning attitude.
Direct Effects (Group Difference):
- Regular Students: Growth mindset did not directly predict mathematics scores; its effect was entirely mediated by psychological variables.
- Competitive Students: Growth mindset exerted both a significant indirect effect and a significant direct positive effect on mathematics academic achievement ( $\beta = 0.346$ ).
Path Strength Heterogeneity:
- Learning Attitude: The promoting effect of growth mindset on learning attitude was significantly stronger for regular students than for competitive students.
- Self-Efficacy: The predictive effect of self-efficacy on mathematics scores was significantly stronger for competitive students. Consequently, the indirect path of "Growth Mindset $\rightarrow$ Self-Efficacy $\rightarrow$ Achievement" was significantly stronger for competitive students.
Anxiety: While competitive students reported significantly lower mathematics anxiety than regular students, the path from growth mindset to anxiety reduction did not differ significantly between groups.

Key Contributions

Contextual Heterogeneity: The study demonstrates that growth mindset is not a universally adaptive resource with a fixed mechanism of action. Its operational mode is context-dependent, shifting from a purely indirect influence (mediated by attitude and anxiety) in regular learning environments to a dual influence (direct and indirect) in high-competition environments.
Differentiated Pathways: It identifies that in competitive settings, self-efficacy becomes a more critical bridge between growth mindset and achievement, whereas in regular settings, growth mindset primarily functions by fostering a positive learning attitude.
Stability of Teacher Support: The research confirms that teacher support remains a robust, stable antecedent to growth mindset regardless of the competitive intensity of the learning environment.

Significance and Claims
The authors claim that these findings reveal the "context-dependent nature of growth mindset," challenging the notion of a "one-size-fits-all" intervention strategy.

Theoretical Significance: The study enriches Social Cognitive Theory by illustrating how high-performance educational contexts (like Olympiad training) can fundamentally reshape the functional paths of core psychological constructs. It suggests that competitive environments may strengthen the direct link between believing in ability malleability and actual performance, possibly due to the sustained engagement and perseverance required in such contexts.
Practical Significance: The authors argue that educational interventions must be differentiated.
- For regular students, interventions should focus on using growth mindset to cultivate positive learning attitudes and reduce anxiety.
- For competitive students, while mindset is important, the study suggests that fostering stable self-efficacy is paramount, as confidence in one's ability to solve complex problems becomes the central driver of achievement in high-pressure environments.
- Teacher Support: Teachers are encouraged to provide process-oriented feedback and emotional support, as this remains a critical, stable factor in developing growth mindset across all student types.

Limitations
The authors acknowledge the study's limitations, including its cross-sectional design (precluding causal inference), the non-random selection of competitive students (limiting causal claims about training effects), reliance on self-report data (potential social desirability bias), and the specific cultural context of the Chinese educational system, which may affect the generalizability of the findings.