Implications of Mindset on Professional Development of Army Soldiers
Abstract
Noncommissioned officers (NCOs) play a critical role in the professional development of junior enlisted (JE) Soldiers. Although the Army provides NCOs with tools and resources to help them effectively develop JE Soldiers, challenges in this area persist. To help the Army better understand and address these challenges, this report reviews research on mindset, defined as the beliefs that people hold about the fixedness or malleability of peoples traits and abilities. Mindset has been shown to have important implications for professional development outside of military contexts and may offer a novel solution for improving Soldier professional development outcomes. We detail findings from academic publications that describe how mindset has been conceptualized and measured in previous research, the effects of mindset on important individual and group-level outcomes, and how mindsets can be changed through targeted interventions. We also include findings from military-specific publications describing how mindset has been discussed in military contexts. We conclude with how insights from mindset theory and research could be applied to the Army context to create an Army-specific mindset measure, to inform the development of an intervention to foster growth mindset among NCOs, and to improve professional development in the Army more broadly.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2022
- Accession Number
- AD1180351
Entities
People
- Anna C. Sheveland
- April D. Sanders
- Jamie B. Severt
- Melissa A. Bleiberg
- Melissa P. Fletcher
- Peter A. Heslin
- Stephanie L. Reeves
Organizations
- U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences