Parental autonomy support predicts adolescents’ strategic mindset, which relates to self-regulation and academic achievement in Chile

A strategic mindset, an orientation toward self-prompting strategy use amidst challenges, predicts effective learning strategy use, metacognition, and academic achievement. However, prior research has been constrained to western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) adult samples and does not address what parenting practices might be associated with nurturing this mindset. Our research advances the implications of a strategic mindset for adolescents’ self-regulation and academic achievement in a Latin culture and importantly examines which parenting practices may nurture this mindset. We hypothesized that (1) a strategic mindset would be positively associated with higher academic performance, mediated by students’ self-regulated learning behavior, and (2) parent-reported parental autonomy support and support of divergent thinking would be positively associated with their children’s strategic mindset. To explore these hypotheses, survey data were collected from 1,140 sixth- to eleventh-grade students and their parents from seven Chilean schools at two different time points within a single academic year. Our analyses revealed that a strategic mindset significantly predicted adolescent students’ grade point average, mediated by their self-regulated behavior. Additionally, parental autonomy support emerged as the most predictive parenting practice for fostering a strategic mindset in children. These findings have important implications for the generalizability of strategic mindset, and the development of parenting interventions to cultivate it.