An exploration of the impact of process praise in maths lesson on theories of intelligence

Laboratory based research suggests that process praise statements encourage children to take risks in their maths learning because they foster a growth mindset by focusing on mastery as opposed to performance goals.

This thesis evaluates the impact of providing process praise in real world maths lessons on the maths mindset and effort of primary school age pupils between 10-12 years.

The systematic review in this study was conducted to inform the researcher of the most effective professional development approach to employ in the empirical study.

It addressed the question: what is the most effective professional development approach to increase and sustain mainstream teachers use of behaviour specific praise statements (process praise) in the classroom?

Of the eleven studies identified and analysed, it was found that professional development that included performance feedback, target setting and self-monitoring was the most effective in changing and sustaining praise behaviour of classroom teachers.

The empirical paper utilised a between and within participant design with the impact of daily process praise in maths lessons evaluated through pre and post measures of teacher rated effort and self-reported maths mindset.

Results were analysed using mixed ANOVA and found that pupils exposed to process praise increased effort post intervention (medium effect), whereas the control group saw a decrease in effort; and pupils exposed to process praise attributed a higher proportion of a fictitious pupil's maths score to effort rather than intelligence compared to the control group (small effect).

There was no difference between the control and experimental group for the four mindset statements.