Angela Duckworth: The Role Of Grit In Education

Angela Lee Duckworth defines grit as “passion and perseverance to pursue long term goals” (Duckworth and Winkler, True Grit). Grit is putting your mind towards a goal and not to give up, no matter what obstacle that stands in front of you. By becoming a gritty individual, a person gains courage within their self. Having courage, people manage fear of failure and being true within oneself to aim for things they would have never thought they could achieve. Grit is to aspire and succeed in ones future goals in college. Grit is to help maintain effort and interest over time, also to stay committed in spite of adversity. In Duckworth’s studies she showed how gritty people are more likely to become successful than talented people. In a study conducted

Duckworth explains people with grit are those who confront failure and don’t give up easily. She did research on the U.S Army to determine their grit. She realize, if the soldiers had a though of mind of grit they showed good results in their military performance on summer camp. Also, there was a fascinating research she had with taxi drivers relating to grit. Commonly, one would think that taxi drivers make more money in a rainy day. But what she found out was that taxi drivers work less hours in rainy days because they would make the sufficient money they needed for the day. In similarity, she compare this research to talent and grit. One with talent will spent less time on something so they stop immediately once they have proficient. In the other hand, someone with grit will spend longer time and get more out of it.

Grit, what is this? Is it success, is it failure, or is it talent? As Angela Duckworth said “Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day-in and day-out. Not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years. And working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint.” Grit is a combination of strength, persistence, focus, and dedication that helps a person to maintain the optimism and discipline needed to persevere in their goals even if they are head to head with failure. Grit does not depend on talent, IQ, or success. Grit is the ability to fail and learn from your mistake, in order to come back next

There are a lot of different ways people could think of grit. My concept of grit would be having the passion and perseverance to accomplish something. My goal is to one day be a travel nurse. There are alot things that come with nursing, becoming a travel nurse will be challenging but with courage, follow through and excellence rather than perfection you can achieve that goal.

The significance of grit is discussed in a 2013 article published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. To introduce this article the author prompts Angela Lee Duckworth of the University of Pennsylvania, who has been studying grit for the past 11 years, to define “resilience in learning.” This opens up discussion about how differently words such as grit or resilience can be interpreted, and identifies some distinct similarities within individual definitions. Resilience can refer to an overall positivity in a person, as the ability to “bounce back” from a failure or disappointment, or can even be attributed to children who thrive despite an at-risk environment. In the end, regardless of personal definitions, resilience is associated with individuals who succeed.

Duckworth proposes that there are two ways of developing grit: from the inside-out (alone) and from the outside-in (with help). For developing grit from the inside-out, she addresses the subjects of interest, practice, purpose, and hope (91-2). For interest, she stresses that passion isn’t developed quickly, but over a long period of time through the processes of discovery, development, and a lifetime of deepening (102-4, 153). For practice, she emphasizes the importance of consistent deliberate practice, emphasizing quality of time spent practicing over quantity of time, which includes setting “stretch goals” slightly beyond current abilities (118, 121-3, 126). For purpose, Duckworth again defines and stresses the importance of purposeful top-level goals (143-4, 147-8, 160). She defines hope as a combination of relentless perseverance and optimism -- always continuing after failure and believing in oneself (169, 173, 175, 178, 180, 193-5). For developing grit from the outside-in, she stresses the importance of parenting, extracurriculars and culture. For parenting, she notes that all grit paragons have someone in their lives who challenged them to achieve beyond their limits while providing support (212, 220). For extracurriculars, she noted a direct relationship between perseverance in an activity and grittiness later in life, arguing that these activities both require and build grit (223-6, 228-241). For culture, she noted that people conform culture, so joining a gritty culture makes it easy to develop grit (244, 247, 263). The concept of culture in Grit connects to the concepts of social capital, and the multiplier effect because the relationships made between individuals within a gritty culture can mutually spur development of grit. The perseverance and hard work required by daily deliberate practice connects to the long, arduous hours worked by managers every day. Deliberate

Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint.” (TED

Grit is a predictor of academic, professional, and personal success. Grit can be defined as strength of character or the ability to overcome failure and continue to work toward success. People with grit are not always the people with the most natural ability, but their work ethic and ability to overcome obstacles allows them to achieve success. Grit is a very valuable characteristic in almost any venture, as it gives someone an advantage in overcoming the inevitable obstacles they will face. However, grit is much easier adopted when an individual has a growth mindset.

Angela developed a short questionnaire called the “Grit Test”. One must answer the short questions and the results show where you stand on the scale of Grit. She found that the Grit score of someone predicts the level of the achievement they can have under difficult or challenging circumstances. She tried this test at the United States Military Academy, where she had the cadets take the short test and found that the ones who had the highest Grit were the ones who were most likely to go the through with the stringent training program they went through called the “Beast Barracks”. Not the ones with the highest IQ’s, the most talent, or even the most athletic. She tried again in the Scripp’s Spelling Bee, and saw that those who were most intelligent but had a low Grit score were most likely to not make it as far as those who had a higher score. She declared that those who had higher Grit were more likely to pass because they studied harder and with determination. In all of those, it seemed that Grit was the factor that made the students stand out when it came to success, once again proving high IQ’s always being better wrong. Logos is a bit short, as many times in other articles, Grit is simply a glossed over idea that has been thought of up before. In other places, such as a physics teacher and his students in a school in Australia, he saw that Grit had little to do with

Grit is having courage to do something for yourself that other people are not willing to do. At the early age 14 I had to make a decision that would change the next four years of my life. In 8th grade we were able to choose which high school we would want to go to. I decided that I would leave all of my friends and attended the high school that was smaller and taught students in a different way.

What is Grit? Grit is passion. Grit is perseverance. Grit is what everyone including teachers and students should possess. Along with passion and perseverance, to me, in order for one to possess grit in their life, they must be determined and focused no matter what obstacle life may throw at them. Life is hard, but; resilience is key in order to stay determined and focused in the worst of times.

The idea of grit is to be used to help students improve on goals they’ve made, but in the The Downside of Grit by Alfie Kohn he would argue that somethings are better left alone instead of trying to pursue them and achieving them with little success. Kohn claims that grit can be counterproductive because anyone could be continuing something that doesn’t make them content with the outcome. He also discusses about how people with grit could experience issues with psychological health when you try over and over again and end up with continuous failure. It would be better to find an alternative pathway that would cause less stress, and end with success. Another argument that Kohn has is against the reliability of the research done on grit doesn’t rely on evidence. It

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary gives many different definitions defining the word “grit”. A definition that caught my attention was “unyielding courage in the face of hardship or danger” .It gave me a personal reference as to reaching a goal, you have to be faced with challenges that you’ll need to conquer with grit being included. In Angela Lee Duckworth’s TED Talk, “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance,” she claims that having students being pushed to the max is the only way to see the full extent of grit, and I agree with Duckworth. I was able to demonstrate grit on becoming a better basketball play after not making the team my sophomore year of high school. Ever since I was disappointed in my results of not making the team, I had told myself this wasn’t going to mean I was done playing basketball .I gave myself perseverance in knowing I could make it next year with motivation.

Growing up, children are often told the common phrase, “If at first, you don't succeed try, try, again…” (W.C. Fields). This is used to teach children to never give up, a way to ensure that they can triumph over adversity and grow upon their grit. Although, people usually forget the second part of that quote, “…Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.” (W.C. Fields). The second half of the quote is a full contrast to the first half, this is telling children to give up and just stop trying. Those who give up are often thought of having no grit. Some wonder if grit is necessary for society, to be more specific if grit is something that should be taught in school, I feel that it should not. Students switch interests so often that it is hard for them to stick with the same interests as time passes. When a student is enthused about a subject, I see grit as a way for one to express their interests. When one’s passion is put to the test and it feels like there is no progress or no more enjoyment left in that passion is when true grit is shown. Those who support the idea of grit, like Angela Duckworth, believe that grit is a big factor in how one succeeds.

Grit is the power of passion and perseverance. Passion and perseverance are not qualities that everybody has. Not everybody who sets a long-term goal achieves it. People who have passion and perseverance are most likely to succeed in life, because passion is what gives us the ability to stick to a goal for a long period of time, and perseverance is the motivation to continue pursuing our goals. Passion and perseverance are the bridges to achieve your goals. In the TED talk “Grit: the power of passion and perseverance” Angela Duckworth explain what will help you to succeed in life and she called it Grit, which she defined it as passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint.