A new study led by behavior psychologist David Yeager at the University of Texas at Austin, a FutureEd research advisor, points to the potential of a low-cost teacher-training program to improve student engagement, academic outcomes, and teacher well-being.
The Fellowship Using the Science of Engagement (FUSE) is designed to help teachers foster a classroom “culture of learning” in which students are encouraged to embrace challenges, learn from mistakes, and build expertise over time. The study followed 152 sixth- through ninth-grade math teachers across 80 Texas public schools who participated in the program. Teachers were randomly assigned to one of two groups: a treatment group focused on building a culture of learning, with an emphasis on adolescent development and growth mindset, or a control group focused on the cognitive science of learning, emphasizing attention and memory. Training began over the summer and continued asynchronously throughout the school year.
By the fall, teachers in the treatment group were more likely to report using language that supported a culture of learning when students made mistakes, such as asking open-ended questions to understand students’ thinking. Teachers in the control group, by contrast, were more likely to report using language that rushed or embarrassed students. By spring, treated teachers continued to report greater use of culture-of-learning practices overall, suggesting that FUSE led to sustained changes in teacher behavior.
These shifts in teacher practice translated into meaningful differences for students. Students taught by treated teachers reported a more respectful classroom culture and were more likely to choose challenging math problems over easier ones, indicating higher levels of engagement. On a common end-of-year math assessment, classrooms in the treatment group scored higher, with an effect size equivalent to approximately four additional months of learning. Effects were slightly larger for Black students than for white students, narrowing the Black–white achievement gap in treated classrooms by 35 percent.
The program also yielded benefits for teachers themselves, especially for those who entered the study with more fixed mindsets, the belief that students’ abilities are largely static and difficult to change. Their levels of burnout dropped substantially after completing the FUSE program substantially: in the spring, just 16 percent of baseline fixed-mindset teachers in the treatment group reported feeling burned out, compared with 34 percent in the control group. Treated teachers also reported higher overall life satisfaction.
The results indicate that low-cost behavioral interventions such as FUSE—which costs about $25 per student per year—can produce meaningful improvements in student engagement, achievement, and teacher well-being. The researchers caution that the study’s sample size limits its generalizability, underscoring the need for replication in larger and more representative school settings.