Short answer yes, yes we can. Turns out the one factor predominantly associated with racial minority performance (as measured by GPA) is whether or not faculty of growth or fixed mindset … mind-blowing … let’s take a short dive into that. (go check my blog post on growth versus fixed mindset beforehand if you want a refresher on that)

First, here’s the study if you want to read it for yourself (opens in a new window).

Now, the study spanned seven semester over two years, 600 course, and around 15,000 students (46.4% women and 10.9% Underrepresented Racial Minority, aka URM) … yeah, that’s pretty solid of a study. We need to establish some round of the mill facts about the study first:

• Faculty attitude toward learning (growth versus fixed mindset) was self-reported,;

• Faculty in the study were of similar proportions to nationwide faculty (faculty sample: 26.7% female, 4.7% URM; nationwide: 20.4% female, 5.2% URM);

• Their statistical analyses are pretty solid as far as peer-review can tell or as far as I can tell (and goodies, they provide their model for us to check so that’s great);

• Although they reached out to 483 faculty they ended up with 150 usable faculty data points from 13 STEM department types.

The beauty in this study is that nothing but faculty mindset (growth versus fixed) toward students’ learning explain the achievement gap, nothing! And they tried everything, even faculty gender, age, tenure position, anything (see on the left panel here).

I personally thought that for sure older faculty will be confounding this achievement gap - faculty mindset link as it was my belief that older faculty have more of a fixed mindset toward students’ learning … nope.

I also thought that faculty from Underrepresented Racial Minority (URM) mindset will not have the same impact on their students simply due to the fact that they represent a role model for URM students … nope, they too have a big achievement gap if they believe in a fixed mindset.

Belief? Wait what?! Yes, remember that faculty mindset toward students’ learning (growth versus fixed) was self reported so we are talking simply about what faculty believe here … powerful stuff what faculty think. Indeed, it transpires through their actions unconsciously or consciously.

I also thought that faculty with tenure would care less about teaching and thus have a bigger achievement gap … nope.

Finally, it does not matter the area of study, we are all pretty bad at teaching URM if we believe in fixed mindset.

Well well well, what else to say, it’s time to look at that achievement gap we have been talking about for so long … drum rolls …

That is a striking difference, isn’t it? We are seeing a net 0.09 GPA point difference in students’ grade solely due to faculty belief in students’ mindset in term of learning (i.e., can they change and become better or are they stuck where they’re at).

I think this is mind-blowing, not because of the size of the effect, but because of the implications.

The difference in GPA is not overwhelming, but do recognize the potential disparity of data hidden behind averages. Some GPA differences go as high as 0.75 GPA point and as low as 0.01 GPA point for some students (not so trivial now?).

The implications though, that is the crux of this study for me. Let us all realize what the simple fact of faculty belief in students’ learning potential or lack thereof (growth versus fixed mindset) led to that difference in their grades …

Now that we know this, I am definitely convinced that faculty have a lot in their power when it comes to fostering minority success in the classroom. Let us get after all those low hanging fruits now that we know they are there.