IndexGeneral OverviewLiterature ReviewStudent MotivationIdentity IncentivesEpistemic ApprenticeshipSummary of AdviceGeneral Overview The increasing speed of new technological advances and globalization means there is a need for pupils to adapt and learn new skills to survive in the modern world. The academic performance of primary school pupils in Stoke-on-Trent is well below the national average; where 50% of pupils are entitled to free school meals and EMA scholarships due to low income. Academic underachievement is defined as performance below the national standard on assessment. Previously, self-esteem interventions were used to improve academic achievement, but were unsuccessful because children did not have the conscious knowledge to self-report their self-esteem levels. High academic performance is associated with better career prospects, health, and critical skills to adapt and not fall behind in the turbulent 21st century. Growth mindset is defined as seeing intelligence as malleable while a fixed mindset sees intelligence as innate. The NIACE (2010) report suggests that growth mindset interventions are more beneficial for academic outcomes, compared to other educational strategies. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Pupils have become increasingly vulnerable to the threats of stereotypes: labels that reinforce oppressive relationships between groups, leading to self-fulfilling prophecies of failure. Hutching's (2015) argues that this result is due to children becoming aware that exams influence their life path. NSPCC (2015) found that exams triggered attacks of anxiety and depression in 30% of disadvantaged pupils while in 2014-15 15% committed suicide. Putwain (2016) suggests that stereotype threats have greater negative consequences for disadvantaged pupils as they face greater structural and psychological inequalities such as; poverty, Black Caribbeans are seen as a threat to teachers' authority, the challenges of an ethnocentric curriculum, lack of support for disabilities and lack of male role models for boys. However, Manci (2010) suggests that Indian pupils may have a positive experience with teachers' fixed mindset and stereotypes as they are perceived as hardworking. This indicates that stereotypes interact with fixed and growth mindsets through expectations seen as innate or malleable. For example, pupils may believe they don't have a brain for mathematics, which can lead to poor results. New growth mindset interventions supported by contemporary research are needed to increase academic achievement by teaching pupils how the malleability of the brain shows that intelligence develops through perseverance and effort. This approach helps disadvantaged pupils to resist stereotype threats and be resilient in the face of obstacles, increase confidence, creativity and self-evaluation for academic achievement. Literature Review Three areas of research are particularly relevant and are recommended as best practices by Claxton and Carlzon (2018) “Powering Up Children” framework: student motivation, identity incentives, and epistemic apprenticeship. They are discussed as an application of Dweck's incremental theory for a growth mindset intervention and as findings on theimprovement of academic results among pupils. This review will support relevant advice and framework recommendations. Research into student motivation has suggested that teachers who emphasize the importance of core subjects such as maths and English, vital as they may be, are not as effective as teaching pupils the benefits of learning how to learn. . The lifelong learning theory developed by Laal and Laal (2012) expresses the logic behind this conceptualization, according to which increasing change in technology and globalization means that people need the ability to learn new skills to survive and adapt to present day.life. Best practice recommendations suggest that teachers should use pedagogical practices (educational art) and growth mindset motivational frameworks to teach pupils about the brain's neuroplasticity and that these malleable qualities are developed through practice and effort. By teaching primary school children how to learn rather than what to learn, we are able to foster an immeasurable form of social development that can reduce the effects of poverty, oppression and exclusion. Dweck (2009) proposes that this lifelong learning approach, adopting an incremental theory in favor of a growth mindset, allows pupils to see intelligence as a muscle that can be developed rather than a fixed innate trait. The effect of the growth mindset intervention was significantly shown in many areas regarding pupils' belief systems, including improved academic achievement. Fraser (2017) conducted semi-structured interviews in 28 different schools and found that the growth mindset intervention increased pupil performance in classroom culture, outside of teaching, and in students' approach to learning. learning. Goudeau and Croizet (2017) found that without a growth mindset intervention, making students' performance visible in class by asking them to raise their hand after completing a difficult comprehension task threatened disadvantaged students' self-image. when they were unfairly compared. to upper-class students. Schmidt et al's (2015) review concluded that learning to learn does not protect against the effects of stereotype threat due to teachers' fixed mindsets on pupils' personalities and abilities. Teachers may not understand the dynamics that lead the characteristics of apparently talented students to fix the mindset, to avoid failure that diminishes their commitment. This is a limitation of Frasers' (2017) study which does not take into account participant differences such as ethnicity, disability and gender in interactions outside of the classroom that impact academic outcomes. Nonetheless, Rissanen et al (2019) make a clear recommendation for a growth mindset pedagogy, suggesting increasing process-focused thinking and producing personalized learning strategies in pupils. This proposal is supported by further research by; Park et al (2016) found that children's achievement in mathematics was largely influenced by their process-focused thinking, but hardly influenced by the fixed mindset of their teachers. Furthermore, the researchers concluded that a fixed mindset can cause reduced student motivation and a subsequent lack of engagement in process-focused thinking (“work hard” rather than “work smart”) that is associated with increased academic achievement. However, most of theresearch uses a scenario methodology and although these have filled significant gaps in the current literature, there is evidence that lay theories of lifelong learning can lead pupils to view learning as a process requiring more effortful control, than when l intelligence was seen as an innate ability. Study 1 by Klinger and Scholer (2018) used Job et al's (2010) temptation resistance questionnaire which contained scenario-based questions, while study 2 involved an act of self-control of which the persistence and consistency over time. Evidently, Study 2 suggests more reliable results than Study 1 due to greater ecological validity, however in the high effort condition it was more difficult for participants to maintain performance and consistency over time compared to participants in the low effort condition. This indicates that a fixed mindset that believes intelligence is an innate ability can be beneficial to pupils where there is no stereotype threat: a label that reinforces oppressive intergroup relations. This is due to how the individual experiences and interprets effort. For example, if the ability is perceived as an innate talent (“Asian student” naturally good at mathematics) the task seems easier, motivating groups of privileged pupils to academic success. Although, research mostly highlights the importance of a growth mindset, when there are some circumstances where a fixed mindset is advantageous. Hattie (2009) argues that the fixed mindset was most beneficial with easy tasks, requiring creativity or resourcefulness while abandoning previously failed learning methods. Furthermore, Job et al (2015) found that using a growth mindset to encourage repeated practice of previously failed strategies can inhibit learning. Therefore, as Hattie (2009) suggests, when growth mindset interventions are not applied in accordance with the correct motivational framework, the effectiveness on the pupil's academic improvement is significantly reduced; about overcoming setbacks and repeated failures. However, as Clarkson (2016) acknowledges, the benefits of a fixed mindset are circumstantial, so if the growth mindset intervention is to teach process-focused behaviors for effective learning; reconstructing this effort as enjoyable can motivate self-regulation when facing academic setbacks. Edward (2006) proposes to place emphasis on how the brain's neuroplasticity can lead to the development of desired identity-congruent character strengths with persistent effort. Research on identity incentives confirms that growth mindset interventions aided performance through persistence, only when pupils were given autonomy in choosing their own goals. To help students internalize the growth mindset, Iyengar (2010) argues that incentive systems that accentuate rewards and learning processes are critical to supporting growth mindset motivation. However, Nisbett et al's (1973) key problem with rewards is the shift in focus from intrinsic motivation (“I like to work hard”), to extrinsic motivation (“I work hard for the reward”). This overjustification effect was found in a field study by Nisbett et al with 4- to 5-year-old children who drew pictures for the sole purpose of receiving an extrinsic goal: a surprise. Furthermore, some research establishes that autonomy in choosing goals is not required in order to maintain performancepersistent schooling because pupils achieve even more when the goal is imposed by authority figures. Manchi et al (2017) found that Indian girls performed better educationally when rewards and goals were externally validated because they wanted to please others. This indicates that identity plays an important role in incentive systems that maintain pupils' extraordinary performance over time. However, according to Oyserman and Destin (2010), an identity-based motivational framework can overcome these problems by providing pupils with identity-congruent incentives in which pupils choose who and where. where the reward comes from and their goals for achieving it. This persistent effort stems from the need to maintain a positive group identity and is well supported by the literature. Manchi (2017) argues that Black Caribbean pupils would prefer incentives for personal choice over incentives for teacher choice, as they lack identification with our ethnocentric curriculum that does not include Black history. It is recommended to focus on identity-congruent incentives combined with the mental framework of motivational growth. Epistemic Apprenticeship To some extent, the pedagogical culture that teachers create in their classrooms influences the resilience, creativity and dependency of pupils' performance and academic achievement. This school culture is constructed by a fixed and/or growth mindset of teachers, in the form of classroom discourse, activity design, and attitudes toward learning. For example, personalized teacher feedback can create a fixed mindset (“you're really smart”), while process-focused feedback (“you worked really hard”) cultivates a growth mindset by rewarding strategy. The Building Learning Power (BLP) approach predicts that teachers changing their role to learning coaches would increase pupil achievement and engagement. A recent evaluation of the BLP by Claxton (2013) proposes giving pupils an active role in the learning process. The design of their educational and assessment method creates a beneficial epistemic apprenticeship; a set of skills for dealing with difficulties that shapes the thinker's identity. However, Claro's (2016) analysis of a national dataset found that low income meant pupils were 13 times more likely to underachieve due to a fixed mindset. Chakraborty and Jayaraman's (2019) idea that structural interventions such as free midday school meals can improve maths and reading test scores by 18% in less than a year is therefore quite powerful. However, the study only explained variance in academic performance and basic demographics (age/gender) and therefore the results should not be heavily weighted as income was not considered as a mediating variable. However, there is evidence that psychological inequalities are more powerful promoters of pupils' academic performance. Claro's (2016) report illustrates that structural inequalities give rise to psychological inequalities and it is these that cause barriers to educational attainment. Claxton's (2006) BLP proposes that teachers can create a growth mindset by targeting each link, the building block of an epistemic apprenticeship. Church and Morrison (2011) tested visible BLP mental and thinking habits and found that children's attention shifts away from standard techniques. The researchers' recommendations suggest that the BLP approach to epistemic apprenticeship is complementary to interventions.