Teacher and student mindsets in the classroom: Multilevel links with emotional support, achievement and anxiety

Background: Teachers' growth mindsets are increasingly studied as predictors of student learning. However, most research relies on teachers' self-reports, leaving unclear how students' perceptions of their teachers' mindsets relate to outcomes such as achievement and anxiety.

Aims: We aimed to clarify whether and how teachers' growth mindsets shape students' emotional and academic development in mathematics. We examined how teachers' self-reported mindsets and students' perceptions of their teachers' mindsets relate to student perceptions of emotional support and student outcomes (growth mindset, mathematics achievement and mathematics anxiety). Further, we investigated whether emotional support is statistically associated with student outcomes.

Sample: Data were drawn from 883 fifth-grade students (Mage = 10.68 years, 44.6% girls) nested in 60 classrooms across 33 public schools in six German federal states surveyed across three time points over one school year.

Methods: Longitudinal multilevel structural equation models were applied to distinguish between individual (within-classroom) and classroom-level processes over time.

Results: Students' perceptions of their teacher's growth mindset were strongly linked to perceived emotional support, whereas teachers' self-reported mindsets showed no associations with emotional support or student outcomes. Students' own growth mindsets were associated with lower mathematics anxiety and higher achievement. No class-level effects or indirect pathways emerged, underscoring that growth-oriented signals operate mainly within individual teacher–student relationships.

Conclusions: Students' perceptions of teacher beliefs appear more consequential than teachers' self-reports, highlighting the importance of capturing student perspectives when linking teacher mindsets to emotional and academic outcomes.