International insights into academic mindset

July 29, 2026

Our second EENE project paper is out! “International insights into the academic mindset of economics students” is published in the International Review of Economics Education, and it carries the questions from our first paper beyond the United States.

Carlos Cortinhas and Jana Sadeh led this one. It draws on surveys of 1,188 students and 14 instructors across 18 modules at 11 universities in eight countries, collected over the 2023/24 and 2024/25 academic years. The central finding is that academic mindset is dynamic and context dependent rather than steadily improving. Students’ sense of belonging in economics and their sense of the discipline’s relevance both rose over a teaching term, while general self-efficacy and beliefs about how accessible economics is declined. Gender was a consistent source of heterogeneity: non-male students reported lower self-efficacy and weaker perceived relevance, and several of those gaps were still visible at the end of term. Pedagogical context mattered too, with active learning environments and intermediate-level courses linked to stronger mindset measures.

When read alongside “Measuring Academic Mindset in Economics Courses”, which used US data, the two papers are a good argument for why EENE exists. The same instrument, fielded in enough places, tells you which results travel and which ones do not.

And congratulations to all the EENE member authors on this one: