Mindset Matters: Employing Economic Research And Practical Interventions To Fight Poverty
Media Inquiries
With Build Back Better (BBB) Regional Challenge(opens in new window) funding, Carnegie Mellon University’s Ashley Orr will explore how instilling growth mindset concepts can be applied in job retraining to promote equitable economic growth.
Orr, a Ph.D. candidate in public policy and management(opens in new window) in CMU’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy(opens in new window), recognized that workers could face barriers when engaging with this changing market, affecting their economic mobility.
As the labor market evolves — to include the workplace use of generative artificial intelligence(opens in new window) — the types of work available and the tools to do that work will also change, Orr said. In order to be ready for those changes, within the next decade, millions of U.S. workers will need to engage in some kind of retraining/upskilling.
“We know that access to high paying jobs is not equal, and one solution is to address inequities in skills with community-based training programs,” she said in a Q&A(opens in new window) with the Block Center for Technology and Society(opens in new window) at CMU.
After winning a $25,755 subgrant from the Biden administration’s Build Back Better (BBB) Regional Challenge(opens in new window), Orr applied the concept of growth mindset to job retraining in collaboration with Bidwell Training Center in Pittsburgh’s Chateau neighborhood, among other community-based job training initiatives, for a first of its kind initiative in Southwestern Pennsylvania.
What is growth mindset?
Growth mindset is the belief that human capacity is something that can be developed over time through effort, with appropriate support and strategies.
Counter to a growth mindset, a fixed mindset is the belief that skills, once acquired, are set and can’t be developed further. Some historical surveys estimate that more than 50% of the population thinks this way.
“You can see how a fixed mindset could become a problem for any large economic transition which requires many workers to upskill,” Orr said.
Orr’s Growth Mindset Project aims to support instructors, who then retrain workers in emerging occupations. The initiative teaches job trainees the concept, asking them to analyze their own way of thinking. Next, it gives them opportunities to practice it, then support their peers in also practicing a growth mindset to learn new skills.
“Our research finds that it only takes 75 minutes for job trainers to orient the mindsets of job trainers toward growth, give them implementable steps to support a growth mindset in their trainees, and training program design,” Orr said.
Orr worked with Jacob Cribbs, a master’s student in Heinz College’s Public Policy and Management program(opens in new window), to collect, analyze and present their pilot project at the Labor and Employment Relations Association(opens in new window) conference in June.
Orr said she works to put her research into action as an “anti-poverty practitioner.”
“Any researcher interested in research questions that address economic inequality is doing the hard work of making our economy more equitable,” Orr said. “My concern that poverty is deeply unjust means, in practice, that I will always be asking research questions that center low- and middle-income workers.”
Orr applied for the Build Back Better subgrant with the support of her adviser, Brian Kovak(opens in new window), professor of economics and public policy, and mentors Lowell Taylor(opens in new window), the H. John Heinz III University Professor of Economics, and Edson Severnini(opens in new window), associate professor of economics and public policy, all at Heinz College.
