Evaluation of a Growth Mindset Intervention in Bangladesh Secondary Schools

Belief in one’s private ability to succeed in school can have large impacts on private educational investment. Growth mindset interventions, which aim to increase individuals’ perceived abilities to learn, have been shown to reverse downward grade trajectories among low performing students in the United States. Despite evidence for their potential success developing countries, no such intervention has been tested. I propose a randomized experiment to test whether a growth mindset intervention can change grade trajectories for secondary school students in Bangladesh. I will test the impact of the intervention on ~960 secondary school students from two schools, one urban, one rural. In addition, I will randomly treat parents, orthogonally to students, to test whether their changing beliefs impact their childrens’, and I will include information about the returns to schooling for half of treated and control parents to test the complementarity of information and growth mindset interventions.