Growth mindset protects kids against harms of unwanted homework help

Most caregivers get involved in their children's homework to some extent. Their intention, of course, is to help. But if the child hasn't actually asked for assistance, those efforts can backfire. Research shows that uninvited carer involvement in homework can lead to lower grades in pupils of all ages. 

Daeun Park of Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea and colleagues wondered whether a child's beliefs about intelligence might play a role in this. In their paper in Developmental Psychology, they report work suggesting that this is the case: a belief that it's possible to get smarter — a 'growth mindset' — seemed to buffer against poorer maths performance linked to high levels of caregiver homework meddling. 

For the first of two studies, the team recruited 563 children aged around six to seven from 23 urban schools in the US. In the autumn, and then again in the following spring, an experimenter assessed the children during one-on-one meetings. 

The experimenter asked the children set questions about their views on the malleability of academic ability — for example, to what extent they believed that maths ability can change. They also assessed the children's motivation to attempt hard problems, rather than going for easy tasks that they were sure to get right. (Earlier work has linked a preference for easier tasks to a more fixed mindset.) 

The children then reported on the extent of three types of homework interference: how often a caregiver helped with their maths homework even when they didn't need it, how often they checked their maths homework to make sure it was right without asking them first, and how often they reminded them about the need to complete their maths homework. Finally, the children completed a brief maths test. 

The team's analyses suggested that having a growth, rather than fixed, mindset was linked to better test scores. However, when they dug into the data in more detail, they found that for children whose caregivers didn't really get involved in their maths homework, their mindset was unrelated to their level of improvement in maths scores in spring, compared with the previous autumn. When caregiver meddling was high, though, children with a fixed mindset improved significantly less than those with a growth mindset. This group achieved only about half the average improvement of all the children in the study.

In a second study, the team used a similar approach with a bigger group of adolescent pupils, again from US schools. This study of 1,613 pupils, who were initially in the eighth grade, spanned two academic years and used maths grade point averages (GPAs) to measure achievement.

Again, the team found that when caregivers didn't really get involved in homework, there was no difference in changes in GPA over time between children with a fixed versus growth mindset. But when uninvited caregiver involvement was high, children with a fixed mindset did worse than those with a growth mindset. 

"To our knowledge, these findings represent the first empirical evidence for the hypothesis that mindsets and caregiver intrusive homework behaviour interact to influence achievement across development," the authors write.  

It's worth stressing that the effect sizes in these studies were small. The team argues, though, that small effects can be practically meaningful, especially in child development. When considering educational outcomes and the documented links between higher academic achievement and better future health, even small effects can have a huge impact. 

There are some definite limitations to the study, however. Most notably, caregivers who involve themselves in their child's maths homework might differ in other ways that directly affect their child's academic motivation and achievement. For instance, they may be more generally critical, or react more harshly to poor test results. 

Another caveat for some will be that the very idea of a growth mindset leading to improved academic achievement has drawn criticism, after instances of failures to replicate some previous findings. Carol Dweck, the pioneer of this concept, has vigorously defended it, however.

For caregivers reading with interest, this new research suggests that encouraging your child to hold a growth mindset could buffer against any negative effects of you getting involved with their homework. If you think your child believes that intelligence is fixed, however, perhaps beware of the type of homework 'help' that you give. 

Read the paper in full: https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2023-71558-001