Parental mindsets as determinants of children’s achievement goals and performance in math

Parents’ beliefs about the nature of ability are communicated to their children through parent–child interactions. Parental mindsets are one of the parental beliefs that have received increasing attention over recent years. However, their role in children’s motivation and achievement outcomes remains relatively underexplored. Moreover, most existing studies have measured parental mindsets as either reported by parents themselves or perceived by children only, making it difficult to develop a comprehensive understanding of their role. Yet, parents’ mindsets and children’s perceptions of their parents’ mindsets may not be identical, and one may be more important than the other in shaping children’s motivation and achievement. Using the data from 507 third- and fourth-graders and their parents in Korea, we examined how parents’ growth and fixed mindsets, both self-reported and child-perceived, predicted children’s achievement goals, persistence, and achievement in mathematics. Whereas the growth and fixed mindsets of parents correlated negatively with each other, there was no significant relationship between self-reported and child-perceived parental mindsets. Parents’ growth mindset positively predicted children’s mastery goals. In contrast, parents’ fixed mindset negatively predicted children’s mastery goals and positively predicted children’s ability-focused and normative performance goals. Children’s mastery goals in turn positively predicted their persistence and achievement. The indirect paths from parental mindsets to children’s persistence and achievement through children’s mastery goals were also significant. In general, the child-perceived mindsets of parents demonstrated a stronger predictive power than the self-reported mindsets of parents. The underexplored role of parental mindsets is discussed concerning children’s achievement goal adoption and learning.