The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how high school teachers described the influence of a growth mindset as it related to teaching pedagogy and students’ academic achievement for grades 9, 10, 11, and 12 at a sizable urban public-school district in northern New Jersey. Dweck’s (2016a) mindset theory was used as the theoretical foundation. There were 11 interviews and two focus groups conducted on Zoom. A thematic analysis included the construction of seven themes derived from the given data generated through transcriptions on Trint and coding on MAXQDA. The findings were that when teachers applied growth mindset in teaching pedagogy, most students developed a growth mindset, were able to transfer a growth mindset into various domains, and demonstrated success in academic achievement.
KeywordsGrowth MindsetFixed MindsetTeaching PedagogyAcademic AchievementGrowth Mindset ScaleKind of Person Implicit Theory ScaleHigh School
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