Hui Xu (Beijing Normal University) – Wings of Growth: A Mindset Intervention in Rural China

We evaluate the impact of “Wings of Growth”, a six-week intensive growth mindset intervention designed to foster optimistic beliefs about the role of effort in success and to enhance resilience to failure and setbacks. The experiment was conducted in 18 junior high schools in rural China, where more than half of the students experience parental absence. Preliminary analysis of intermediary outcomes shows that students in the treated groups exhibit a strengthened growth mindset and more internal locus of control, along with an increase in self-reported grit. However, we do not observe any significant changes in self-esteem, self-regulation, future educational aspirations, or grit as measured in a supplementary experiment. We plan to assess how the intervention, as an additional school input, influences students’ short-term and medium-term academic achievements, and we are particularly interested in how its impact varies with different levels of parental input.