Teen Math Mindset Study: An Exploration of Teens' Math Beliefs and Experiences Studying Math. Executive Summary

Educators and researchers highlight the important role that math plays as a consequential gateway to upward mobility in the United States (and globally). The purpose of this study was to develop a survey for teens in middle school and high school, to capture information about their math mindsets, identities, experiences studying math, and course-taking behaviors. NORC and AmeriSpeak® staff developed a survey and administered it to a representative sample of teens, ages 13-17, using AmeriSpeak® Teen Panel. The authors developed a teen survey and parent survey, following best practices in survey research. During fall of 2021, AmeriSpeak® fielded the survey to its Teen Panel and invited parents of the Teen Panel respondents to take the parent survey. This report presents a summary of the study. The analyses yielded three viable factors for the teen survey: classroom contexts, math identity and beliefs, and parental involvement. This suggests a good degree of reliability in the survey questions and indicates that the questions measure key constructs of interest for this study. Thus, the teen survey items may be a useful measure of change in students' classroom contexts, math identify and beliefs and parental involvement and thus useful to explore impacts on teens' mindsets, course-taking behaviors, and performance.