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Comprehensive Exam Paper - Grit & Mindset

Summary and critique of the literature on educational interventions that aim to increase students’ grit and mindset.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
37 views10 pages

Comprehensive Exam Paper - Grit & Mindset

Summary and critique of the literature on educational interventions that aim to increase students’ grit and mindset.

Uploaded by

oxanamita
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 10

Comprehensive Examination

Item 1

1. By early 2000s, it was well-known that economic disadvantage can affect young person’s

potential for learning through multiple mechanisms (Coleman, 1966; Finn & Rock, 1997),

while her beliefs may temper or exacerbate these effects (Lefkowitz, Tesiny, & Gordon,

1980; Stipek & Gralinski, 1996). William Sedlacek (2004) was one of the first researchers

who contended that there should be other, non-cognitive predictors of future academic

success and that those predictors are as strong as grades and academic testing data.

Carol Dweck (1986, 1999) and other researchers (e.g., Aronson et al., 2001) found that

academic success depends on whether people respond to academic failure with helplessness

or a more robust ‘‘mastery oriented’’ response. In 2005, Dweck developed socio-cognitive

theory of motivation with key concepts of “fixed mindset” and “growth mindset” (2016).

According to Oxford American Dictionary, mindset is "an established set of attitudes held by

someone" (Ehrlich, 1980). To Dweck, a person with fixed mindset on intelligence and talents

sees them as immutable and tries to avoid challenging life situations that may damage their

sense of their aptitudes (2016). A person with growth mindset, on the other hand, sees her

intelligence and aptitudes as fluid, a work in progress, and seeks out challenging learning

experiences (2016). Growth mindset, therefore, “allows people to thrive during some of the

most challenging times of their lives,” for example, during higher studies (Dweck, 2016).

To develop and test her socio-cognitive theory of motivation, Dweck (1999) created 3-item

Growth Mindset Scale (GMS), and presented a few fixed-vs-growth mindset scenarios for

different areas of life where a particular mindset can affect one’s career, sports, or love

(2016). Most importantly, according to Dweck, mindsets are not set: at any time, any person

can learn to develop a growth mindset about her academic ability, even if she used to think of

her brain and aptitudes as immutable (2016). Dweck’s research team and her co-authors from

other universities tested the theory for a decade, publishing numerous papers with evidence

that 1) growth mindset boosts motivation and predicts higher academic achievement; 2)

Page 1 of 10
Comprehensive Examination
Item 1

students’ growth mindsets tend to temper the effects of economic disadvantage on a systemic

level, while fixed mindsets tend to exacerbate racial, gender, and social-economic

achievement gaps; 3) academic mindset is malleable; 4) mindset can be impaired and taught;

5) targeted classroom interventions help students start to develop a growth mindset and 6)

lead to higher achievement, especially in disadvantaged students (Blackwell et al., 2007;

Broda et al, 2018; Claro et al, 2016; Grades 9-12; Haimovitz et al., 2011; Paunesku et al.,

2015: Stephens, Hamedani, & Destin, 2014; Walton & Cohen, 2011; Yeager, et al. 2016).

Angela Duckworth built her research in the psychology of success on belief of Sedlacek and

findings of Dweck. Expanding on Dweck's premise and other research in the field,

Duckworth and her team focused on non-cognitive variables of grit and self-control as

predictors of academic achievement. They defined personality trait of Grit as “perseverance

and passion for long-term goals … [which] entails working strenuously toward challenges,

maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress.”

Duckworth’s team developed 12-item Grit Scale (Duckworth et al, 2007) and a shorter

version of the scale, with 8 items (Duckworth and Quinn, 2009). The scale measured Grit as a

compound trait comprised of 1) Consistency of Interest, which reflects the ability to focus on

a small set of relevant goals related to the pursuit of the larger, more important objective, and

2) Perseverance of Effort, which reflects effort toward one’s enduring or superordinate goal.

The two concepts—mindset and grit—were found intertwined in the way that when teaching

understanding and developing grit, teachers impair the growth mindset to students and raise

expectations for their learning (Hoerr, 2013). Both GMS and Grit Scale have been publicly

available and widely employed in research over the followed decade. Research studies on grit

confirmed that, controlling for cognitive ability, the construct is associated with educational

attainment and retention in adolescents (Duckworth & Quinn, 2009) and professional success

at any point of adult life (Vallerand, Houlfort, & Forest, 2014; Wrzesniewski et al., 2012).

Page 2 of 10
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Longitudinal studies showed that grit predicts the completion of challenging goals despite

obstacles and set-backs (Eskreis-Winkler et al, 2014; Robertson-Kraft & Duckworth, 2014).

Similar to growth mindset studies, the grit score was found to be positively associated with

academic achievement, and the strongest effect of interventions was observed for students

with lower initial grit scores (Flanagan & Einarson, 2017). Classroom interventions for both

mindset and grit were student-directed, teacher-led, in-person or online. Interventions varied

from process-based praise to teaching students about neuroscience evidence showing that the

brain is malleable and gets stronger through trying new strategies and seeking help when

necessary (Sun, 2018), to direct or indirect message that “intelligence is not a finite

endowment, but rather an expandable capacity that increases with mental work” (Aronson,

Fried, & Good, 2001).

Research results from Dweck’s and Duckworth’s teams suggested that grit and growth

mindset are as powerful predictors of future academic achievement as are intelligence and

talent (Duckworth, 2016; Dweck, 2008). That resulted in heightened academic enthusiasm

about the concepts and intensified attention from the media (Sisk et al., 2018) and college

admissions (Nutt & Hardman, 2019). Millions of dollars were given in funding to nonprofit

and for-profit organizations, such as US Department of Education or Bill and Melinda Gates

Foundation, while schools were purchasing and applying multiple intervention programs

contributing to “mindset revolution that is reshaping education” (Boaler, 2013).

Then, critique on both concepts had started to appear. A number of studies found that two

correlated facets of grit are differentially related to behavioral outcomes associated with grit,

thus casting a shadow on construct validity of grit as a single personality trait (Credé, Tynan,

& Harms, 2017; Lam & Zhou, 2019). Other empirical research and meta-analyses had shown

inconsistent findings on the relationships between grit, mindset, and academic achievement:

Page 3 of 10
Comprehensive Examination
Item 1

1) grit does not add to explained variance in achievement but is likely to be a component of

conscientiousness (Rimfeld, Kovas, Dale, & Plomin, 2016); 2) grit correlates only with

attention (Kalia et al., 2018); 3) mindset intervention increases growth mindset scores of

students but does not affect the grades (Brougham & Kashubeck-West, 2018; Sisk et al.,

2018); 4) grit is associated with increased engagement and academic achievement but is

uncorrelated with growth mindset (Tang et al., 2019); and 5) although mindsets appear to be

associated with socioeconomic status and achievement, the socioeconomic-achievement gap

in the US “is likely driven by the root causes of inequality” (Destin et al., 2019).

All in all, open science approach and cooperation of Dweck’s team revealed that the effect-

sizes from their studies cannot be replicated due to inappropriate benchmarks for effect-sizes,

non-applicable to educational evaluation studies (Chivers, 2017). The concept of grit fell

apart as a construct and needed more thorough operationalization (Tang et al., 2019).

However, the motivational theory of Dweck withstood the hardships. Dweck’s team was

exemplary responsive to critique and upgraded all statistical analyses to advanced levels

(Dweck & Yeager, 2019; Rege et al., 2020).

As a researcher interested in statistical methods and SES-achievement dynamics, I believe

that research on non-cognitive predictors of achievement is still in its youth but has an

immense potential (Park, Tsukayama, Yu, & Duckworth, in press) and it would be ill-

considered decision to discard two decades of work and a large body of collected data. Social

scientists have long been embracing quantitative methods. Today, they have to develop an

earnest attitude to statistical techniques.

I would suggest including a highly qualified statistician in every research group and a

rigorous re-calculation of all studies on mindset. Further, because half of the Grit Scale

reflects consistency of interest (i.e., passion) and another half reflects perseverance of effort

Page 4 of 10
Comprehensive Examination
Item 1

(i.e., persistence) the concept of grit might be re-validated as two correlated but independent

constructs. Even if persistence eventually turns into consciousness or one of its components,

it is still worth to go over collected data and rethink the ideas about non-cognitive predictors

of academic achievement.

Today, amid pandemic, we find ourselves in the beginning of a new era in education. Self-

discipline, passion, attention, believes, and all other latent characteristics are becoming even

more crucial for previously unthinkable idea of blended learning in elementary and secondary

schools. But we know too little about them as constructs (Dweck & Yeager, 2019). Complex

but reliable statistical and neuropsychological techniques will help to identify and

operationalize them, to reveal the relations among them and the roles they play in learning

(Chivers, 2017; Rege et al., 2020; Stroman, 2019).

2. Although the research results on grit are widely recognized as questionable, to discard the

educational interventions proposed on the basis of grit research would be throwing the baby

out with the bathwater. Either grit is a part of consciousness or it is an independent human

faculty of cognitive engagement or persistence, the researchers will estimate this in future.

For now, the practitioners can ignore the erroneous part of research on grit—the construct of

grit itself—and focus on the confirmed associations between the interventions and

achievement. All interventions suggested by Duckworth and her team were actually tested

through lengthy and laborious studies and proved to be positively correlated with academic

achievement. Thus, one study’s title as “Perceived school goal-structure predicts growth in

grit and grades” can be transformed into “Perceived school goal-structure predicts grades”

(Park, Yu, Baelen, Tsukayama, & Duckworth, 2018). Cutting out the ambiguous concept of

grit, we convert a sizeable part of Duckworth’s research into testing of numerous educational

interventions as predictors of teenagers’ academic success.

Page 5 of 10
Comprehensive Examination
Item 1

Another one example of a valid intervention is extracurricular activities that require

deliberate practice to learn a skill. Duckworth found them teaching the skill and grit, which

then translates to other aspects of one’s life and leads to later success (2016, p. 234). Because

of the operationalization error, we cannot define the second learnt skill as a grit, but the

statistical testing of mediation of that skill was rigorous and confirmed that the skill exists.

Statistical analysis on causation link between deliberate-practice extracurricular activities and

college graduation is also out of doubt. Hence, there is no need to repudiate a valuable

intervention of extracurricular activities. Recent research from Duckworth team also supports

such decision (Gardner, Hutt, Kamentz, Duckworth, & D’Mello, 2020).

According to Dweck, the entire purpose of mindset research is “development of replicable

growth-mindset interventions aimed at enhancing motivation and well-being on a larger

scale” (Dweck & Yeager, 2019). After having addressed the errors in calculating effect-sizes,

the team found modest effects on academic outcomes for students with higher levels of risk

for academic underperformance. Those are students in medium-to-low-achieving high

schools who have lower grades before the intervention (Bettinger et al., 2018; Paunesku et

al., 2015). In college, they are students of color or first-generation college students (Broda et

al., 2018; Yeager et al., 2016). There is no effect of mindset intervention on higher achieving

students’ grades, but they benefit in challenge-seeking behaviors that might help in long term

with lifelong health and work outcomes (Carroll, Muller, Grodsky, & Warren, 2017).

Mindset interventions are inexpensive and easy to deliver and can be administered in two 25-

minute sessions (Paunesku, 2013). Taking into account that revised effect-sizes of mindset

interventions to achievement were successfully replicated in Europe (Rege et al, 2020),

imparting growth mindset to students should be encouraged by educational policies of the

21st century. This will help to boost intrinsic motivation of students and will provide them

with a crucial tool for future success (Rattan, Savani, Chugh, & Dweck, 2015).

Page 6 of 10
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