Why Mindset & Agency?

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and I shall move the world.”
— Archimedes

Put simply, they’re the strongest levers we have to lift students up so they can succeed anywhere!

More and more scientific evidence shows that it’s what students bring with them to college and how those skills and characteristics interact with aspects of their academic and extracurricular experience that largely determines how well they succeed.

Research on academic and student success shows that these skills and characteristics are highly interconnected in real life. A student’s confidence in themselves and interest in an activity impact their motivation and willingness to regulate their learning or behavior, which in turn, impact their resilience, goal setting, help-seeking, and more.

These characteristics and skills fall under 2 broad and interconnected concepts - Academic Mindset & Individual Agency.

Academic Mindset involves how the student values, enjoys, and approaches intellectual activities, which dominate students’ academic experiences. How much they enjoy learning, studying, analyzing, and other intellectual challenges, and whether they have confidence in their academic skills or if they believe they can improve their academic abilities and strategies, etc. all influence academic success.

Individual Agency involves resilience, self-efficacy, help seeking, managing emotions, etc. It’s a student’s ability to self-manage, respond to stress, solve problems effectively, and maintain commitment to their goals & objectives, in and outside the classroom.