NUR6023 Module 4 resilience and mindset analysis example

"I'm Just Not a Science Person": What the Evidence on Growth Mindset and Resilience Supports After Eleven Students Fail the First Pharmacology Examination, and What It Does Not

Student Name

American College of Education

NUR6023: Transformational Teaching in Nursing Education

Module 4 Assignment

Instructor Name

May 27, 2030

What Happened After the First Examination

Eleven of 64 students scored below the passing threshold of 78% on the first pharmacology examination this spring. Within a week, two had withdrawn from the course. I met with eight of the remaining nine. Their explanations varied, but three themes recurred. Several said some version of "I'm just not a science person" or "I've never been good at memorizing," describing their ability as fixed. Several described studying hard, by rereading, and not understanding why it had not worked. And most described circumstances that left little time: full-time jobs, children, long commutes. One student who withdrew told me by email that she had failed and did not belong in nursing. This paper asks what an instructor can reasonably do about the first two themes, and what the third means for any such effort.

Two Concepts

A growth mindset is the belief that intellectual abilities can be developed through effort, good strategies and help from others, as opposed to a fixed mindset, the belief that ability is a fixed trait. The theory predicts that students with a growth mindset respond to failure by increasing effort and changing strategies, while students with a fixed mindset interpret failure as evidence of a lack of ability and withdraw. Resilience is a broader concept. An integrative review of nine articles on resilience in nursing students found that most borrowed definitions from psychology, generally describing the capacity to adapt and recover in the face of adversity, and grouped the factors that affect it into three themes: support, time and empowerment (Thomas & Revell, 2016). The review also found that strategies to build resilience in nursing students had rarely been tested, and those that had been used disparate methods.

What the Evidence Supports

Growth mindset has been widely promoted in education, and the evidence is more modest than its popularity suggests. Two meta-analyses, one of 273 studies on the relationship between mindset and academic achievement and one of 43 studies of mindset interventions, found that overall effects were weak in both, although some results suggested that students from low socioeconomic backgrounds or who are academically at risk may benefit from interventions (Sisk et al., 2018). A national experiment with a representative sample of American secondary students then found that a short online intervention, under an hour long, improved grades among lower-achieving students, and that the effect held where peer norms supported the intervention's message (Yeager et al., 2019).

Three conclusions follow for my course. First, a growth mindset message alone is unlikely to change much for most students, and I should not expect it to. Second, the students most likely to benefit are those like the ones I met: lower-achieving and, in several cases, from low-income backgrounds. Third, context matters. A message that ability can grow will be undermined if the course's structure tells students otherwise, for example if a single failed examination leaves no path to recovery. Telling students that ability can grow means little in a course designed as if it cannot.

What an Instructor Can Change

The evidence points less toward mindset lessons than toward course design and feedback that make growth possible and visible. I will make four changes. First, feedback. My comments on returned examinations currently state scores and correct answers. I will add a brief strategy comment for each student below the threshold, naming what to change rather than how they performed, for example "your errors are on application questions; practice with the weekly quizzes' why items rather than rereading." Second, a path to recovery. Students who fail a unit examination may complete a structured remediation module and take a second version of the examination, with the final score capped at the passing threshold, so that one bad week does not decide the course. Third, study strategy. The first-week session on retrieval and spacing from Module 3 gives students who studied hard without results a specific explanation and an alternative, which addresses the second theme directly. Fourth, stories of struggle. In the second week, a panel of three graduates of the program, each of whom failed a course examination and went on to pass the licensure examination, will describe what they changed.

The First Conversation

The meeting after a failed examination is where the course's message about growth is either confirmed or contradicted, so I have written a structure for it. I will open with the examination, not the student: which questions were missed and what kind they were, recall or application, early units or late. I will ask how the student prepared, in detail, and listen for strategies rather than hours. Then I will name one change in strategy and one resource, such as the weekly quizzes' explanation items or the tutoring center's pharmacology sessions, and agree on when we will check in again. I will avoid two kinds of statement. The first is praise for ability, such as telling a student they are smart enough to pass, which sounds kind but ties success to a fixed trait. The second is effort praise that is not true, such as telling a student who studied for three hours that they clearly worked hard, when the problem was the method, not the effort. Where the student names a circumstance, such as a new night-shift job, I will treat it as a problem to solve with them, not a sign of weak commitment. For the student who wrote that she did not belong in nursing, I will ask the program director whether she can be contacted about returning next semester, and I will tell her that the students I most admired in last year's class had failed an examination too.

What Lies Outside the Classroom

The third theme is the one no mindset message can reach. Students who work full time and care for children do not fail for lack of belief in their ability; they fail for lack of time. The resilience review's themes of support and time apply directly (Thomas & Revell, 2016). The instructor's contribution here is limited but real: predictable deadlines published at the start of the semester, quizzes open for several days rather than hours, recorded explanations for students who miss class, and early referral to the college's emergency aid fund and child care assistance. I will also report the pattern to the program director, since the program's schedule, not my course alone, determines how much time students have. Treating structural problems as problems of attitude would be both ineffective and unfair to the students.

Evaluation

I will judge the changes by three measures. The number of students who withdraw after the first examination, compared with the previous two years, will show whether the recovery path and support keep students in the course. The pass rate of students who use the remediation module on the second unit examination will show whether recovery is real. And an end-of-term questionnaire will ask students who failed an examination what helped them continue. Because the evidence on mindset interventions is weak on average, I will not claim that any improvement comes from changing students' beliefs; the design changes are the intervention, and belief is at most one of the paths by which they work.

References

Sisk, V. F., Burgoyne, A. P., Sun, J., Butler, J. L., & Macnamara, B. N. (2018). To what extent and under which circumstances are growth mind-sets important to academic achievement? Two meta-analyses. Psychological Science, 29(4), 549-571. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617739704

Thomas, L. J., & Revell, S. H. (2016). Resilience in nursing students: An integrative review. Nurse Education Today, 36, 457-462. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2015.10.016

Yeager, D. S., Hanselman, P., Walton, G. M., Murray, J. S., Crosnoe, R., Muller, C., Tipton, E., Schneider, B., Hulleman, C. S., Hinojosa, C. P., Paunesku, D., Romero, C., Flint, K., Roberts, A., Trott, J., Iachan, R., Buontempo, J., Yang, S. M., Carvalho, C. M., . . . Dweck, C. S. (2019). A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement. Nature, 573(7774), 364-369. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1466-y