Belongingness moderates student mindsets’ influence among first-generation, community college students of color

Recent insights have underscored the role of context in cultivating intelligence mindsets’ influence on students’ academic outcomes. Psychological affordances of the social context may encourage an adaptive perspective (i.e., growth mindset). Expanding this novel area of investigation, we examined how students’ sense of belonging, as an affordance of the college context, moderates the association between mindset beliefs and academic outcomes. Using secondary data from the 2018 Community College Survey of Student Engagement, we focused on students often deemed at-promise and historically underrepresented in postsecondary education in the U.S.–a sample of 2,043 first-generation Students of Color who enrolled in their first year at one of 129 community colleges. Controlling for several sociodemographic covariates, we used fixed effects regression to identify the extent to which belonging moderated the positive association between growth mindset and college GPA; for students experiencing greater belonging, the association between growth mindset and grades was stronger than for students experiencing lower belonging. This study highlights the concomitance and synergy of students’ sense of belonging and mindset beliefs as situative levers for equitable outcomes in college.