Productive Persistence

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Productive Persistence

• Motivating and Engaging All Students
• David Scott Yeager
• In collaboration with
• Jane Muhich, Nicole Gray, Lawrence Morales, and
  Roberta Brown

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Fixed Mindset Being a 'math person' or not is
something about you that you really can't change.
Some people are good at math and other people
aren't."
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Productive PersistenceTenacity Good
Strategies
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Productive PersistenceScope of Work
Practical Theory
Practical Measures
Improvable Activities / Materials

• Centered on aproblem of practice
• Co-developed with practitioners and students
• Tested with academicexperts

• Brief and practical
• Face-valid forpractitioners
• Recognizable to researchers
• Designed to informimprovements

• Initial set of activities
• Systems for collectingdata
• Strategies forimprovement
• Tests that inform practiceand academic theories

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Creating a Practical Theory and Measures of
Productive Persistence

• Math Faculty
• Surveys of math faculty
• Statway summer institute
• Reviews of the literature, emphasizing articles
  authored by
• Bandura Beilock Cohen Duckworth Elliot
  Hulleman Dweck MDRC Oyserman Vansteenkiste
  Walton Zimmerman

• Interviews with students
• Students attending Foothill college.
• Arleen Arnsparger, from the CCCSE.
• Tests of the model
• Uri Treisman
• Arleen Arnsparger,
• Lawrence Morales,
• Jane Muhich
• Rose Asera
• Mary Ann Firpo
• Coaching
• Lindsay Martin, IHI 

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Development Procedure

1. 90-day cycle to create a list of all potential
   drivers to measure (result 182 drivers)
2. Reduce, using theory and interviews (result 10
   secondary drivers)
3. Collect every measure of each of the drivers
   (result 828 survey items)
4. Reduce and re-write, using best-practices survey
   design (result 26 items, median response 3 min)
5. Pilot cognitive pretests and with respondents

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Primary Drivers of the Problem (things that keep
us from meeting the aim)
Secondary Drivers
Losing students at transitions
Need a shortened, pre-enrolled, year-long
mathematics pathway
Not measured
Course content is not seen as interesting /
relevant
Course material not seen as interesting or useful
Students lack long-term goals
Students lack intrinsic freely-chosen reasons
for learning
Students need skills and habits required for
college success
Students lack the basics of how to be a college
student
Measured in Extended Background Survey
Successfully Completing Developmental Math
Students have math anxiety
Students dont see themselves as math learners
Students do not react well to academic setbacks
(e.g., Im just not good at math teacher is
biased I got lucky)
Students are aware of negative academic
stereotypes
Students have weak ties to peers, faculty and
course of study
Few social ties to faculty
Few social ties to peers
Facultys mindsets about students potential
Some faculty lack skills/beliefs to promote
engagement
Not measured
Facultys beliefs about their role
Facultys engagement skills
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Primary Drivers of the Problem (things that keep
us from meeting the aim)
Secondary Drivers
Survey Pilot
Independent Effects
Course content is not seen as interesting /
relevant
-.32 SD
Course material not seen as interesting or useful
-.64 SD
Students lack long-term goals
Students lack intrinsic freely-chosen reasons
for learning
n.s.
Students need skills and habits required for
college success
Students lack the basics of how to be a college
student
n.s.
Math Performance
Students have math anxiety
-.65 SD
Students dont see themselves as math learners
Students do not react well to academic setbacks
(e.g., Im just not good at math teacher is
biased I got lucky)
-1.16 SD
-.68 SD
Students are aware of negative academic
stereotypes
35 of the variance accounted for
Students have weak ties to peers, faculty and
course of study
n.s.
Few social ties to faculty
n.s.
Few social ties to peers
9
Primary Drivers of the Problem (things that keep
us from meeting the aim)
Secondary Drivers
Survey Pilot
Independent Effects
-15
Course content is not seen as interesting /
relevant
Course material not seen as interesting or useful
-7
Students lack long-term goals
Students lack intrinsic freely-chosen reasons
for learning
-5
Students need skills and habits required for
college success
Students lack the basics of how to be a college
student
-23
Math Grades
Students have math anxiety
-15
Students dont see themselves as math learners
Students do not react well to academic setbacks
(e.g., Im just not good at math teacher is
biased I got lucky)
-5
-10
Students are aware of negative academic
stereotypes
41 of the variance accounted for
Students have weak ties to peers, faculty and
course of study
n.s.
Few social ties to faculty
n.s.
Few social ties to peers
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Starting StrongA Focus on the First 3-4 Weeks
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Starter Package Elements

• Students Mindsets
• Growth Mindset Values Affirmation writing
  activity
• Setting the stage for productive struggle
• Why study statistics?/Why study mathematics?
• Social Connections
• Contract activity
• Group work (already completed)
• College knowledge
• Self-regulated learning

Student mindsets undermine motivation
Few or no connections
Expectations
Students limited college knowledge
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Student mindsets undermine motivation
Miyake et al., Science, College Physics

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Mindsets Co-Development and Pilot
Student mindsets undermine motivation
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Student mindsets undermine motivation
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Student mindsets undermine motivation
Valencia College, Beginning Algebra

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Interviews With Treatment Group What did you
learn from the exercise?
Student mindsets undermine motivation

• As soon as I leave class, I go to the lab. When
  I leave the lab I go home and do more work. Even
  in the car, I am studying. Just doing work, doing
  work, doing work. All day long I am studying
  and that was helping me fail my tests. After I
  read that article it clicked for me. I changed my
  study habits. Instead of just doing work
  throughout all my other activities, I started
  studying for shorter periods of time. And
  actually studying, not just working the same
  problems over again. I tried that for the test
  and I did so much better!

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Improvement Plan

• Improvement of existing starter package elements
• Faculty 2-minute surveys
• Student 2-minute surveys
• MyStatway behaviors
• Development of additional elements
• Piloting this fall in QW colleges and other
  colleges
• Alpha Labs Research into new ideas
• Student surveys
• MyStatway student performance

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