Educational talk about “grit” – being passionate about long-term goals, and showing the determination to see them through –seems too be everywhere in and around schools. Everywhere, that is, except in the rather insular Canadian educational world. Teaching and measuring social-emotional skills are on the emerging policy agenda, but “grit” is (so far) not among them.
Grit is trendy in American K-12 education and school systems are scrambling to get on board the latest trend. A 2007 academic article, researched and written by Angela Duckworth, made a compelling case that grit plays a critical role in success. Author Paul Tough introduced grit to a broad audience in his 2013 book How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, which went on to spend a year on the New York Times bestseller list. And in the same year, Duckworth herself gave a TED talk, which has been viewed more than 8 million times online.
Since then, grit initiatives have flourished in United States school systems. Some schools are seeking to teach grit, and some districts are attempting to measure children’s grit, with the outcome contributing to assessments of school effectiveness. Angela Duckworth’s new book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, is one of the hottest North American non-fiction titles this publishing season. In spite of the flurry of public interest, it has yet to register in the Canadian educational domain.
Over the past three years the Ontario-based People for Education (P4ED) advocacy organization has been pursuing the goal of broadening the existing measures of student success to embrace “social-emotional skills” or competencies. With a clear commitment to “move beyond the ‘3R’s” and redefine the established testing/accountability framework, P4ED founder Annie Kidder and the well-funded Toronto-centred research team have been creating a “broad set of foundational skills” and developing a method of “measuring schools’ progress toward those goals.”
The Ontario P4ED initiative, billed as “Measuring What Matters “(MWM), proposes a draft set of “Competencies and Skills” identified as Creativity, Citizenship, Social-Emotional Learning, and Health — all to be embedded in what is termed “quality learning environments” both in schools and the community. The proposed Ontario model makes no reference whatsoever to cognitive learning and subject knowledge or to the social-emotional aspects of grit, perseverance or work ethic.
The P4ED project has a life of its own, driven by a team of Canadian education researchers with their own well-known hobby horses. Co-Chair of the MWM initiative, former BC Deputy Minister of Education Charles Ungerleider, has assembled a group of academics with impeccable “progressive education” (anti-testing) credentials, including OISE teacher workload researcher Nina Bascia and York University self-regulation expert Stuart Shanker.
A 2015 MWM project progress report claimed that the initiative was moving from theory to practice with “field trials” in Ontario public schools. It simply reaffirmed the proposed social-emotional domains and made no mention of Duckworth’s research or her “Grit Scale” for assessing student performance on that benchmark. While Duckworth is cited in the report, it is for a point unrelated to her key research findings. The paper also assumes that Ontario is a “medium stakes” testing environment in need of softer, non-cognitive measures of student progress, an implicit criticism of the highly regarded Ontario Quality and Accountability Office system of provincial achievement testing.
Whether “grit” or any other social-emotional skills can be taught — or reliably measured — is very much in question. Leading American cognitive learning researcher Daniel T. Willingham’s latest American Educator essay (Summer 2016) addresses the whole matter squarely and punches holes in the argument that “grit” can be easily taught, let alone assessed in schools. Although Willingham is a well-known critic of “pseudoscience” in education, he does favour utilizing “personality characteristics” for the purpose of “cultivating” in students such attributes as conscientiousness, self-control, kindness, honesty, optimism, courage and empathy, among others.
The movement to assess students for social-emotional skills has also raised alarms, even among the biggest proponents of teaching them. American education researchers, including Angela Duckworth, are leery that the terms used are unclear and the first battery of tests faulty as assessment measures. She recently resigned from the advisory board of a California project, claiming the proposed social-emotional tests were not suitable for measuring school performance. “I don’t think we should be doing this; it is a bad idea,” she told The New York Times.
Why are leading Canadian educators so committed to developing “social-emotional” measures as alternatives to current student achievement assessment programs? Should social-emotional competencies such as “joy for learning” or “grit” be taught more explicity in schools? How reliable are measures of such “social-emotional skills” as creativity, citizenship, empathy, and self-regulation?
“Growth Mindset”, the framing of persistence and grit that Carol Dweck champions, is easily taught and the claimed results are dramatic. No secret to it, you teach how the brain works, and how failure (a wrong answer, etc) isn’t ‘bad’, it’s simply feedback that suggests paths to learning. You encourage students to risk failure and embrace hard work.
The problem is that we must set aggressive goals, give kids opportunities to fail, and give honest feedback (“You didn’t pass because you didn’t work hard enough. You didn’t win because your opponent was better prepared than you. If you work harder then you will do better next time.)
The bigger problem is that building and mastering skills (the kind of stuff that Mindset is good at) requires drilling and practice. All that old-fashioned stuff that constructivism tells us not to do. It’s more fun to hand out trophies just for showing up, and blame failure on anything but the child.
I’m going to have to respectfully disagree with Tom’s assessment. This stuff isn’t as easy to teach as we might want to believe. And I’m not sure that grit, perseverance (I’m also thinking that self-regulation belongs in this category) and other related attributes should be considered “skills”.
Nor do I believe that the conversation always needs to move to a “progressive/traditional” type of polarization.
I believe that there are some things our formal education systems can do well and, if they are done well, certain things will follow. For example, if we make learning environments interesting and supportive for all students, we’re going to get increased engagement, higher attendance and better results on a variety of different measures.
Give students things that they can “sink their teeth into”, the skills to pursue those things and they are likely going to stick to them and want to complete them to a high level of excellence.
There’s a complexity that we tend to miss in these conversations and I think that it is important that we’re not too quick to make things too simple.
In terms of grit and perseverance I now have just enough experience with the world of “rep sports” to understand that schools are not the only place to teach these things, and not the only place where students learn them. The value of “showing up”, playing your heart out and putting as much effort into the consolation games as you would into championship games is some of the “real stuff” for kids—and its important.
Just some opening thoughts
A couple of further thoughts after listening to Angela Duckworth’s very brief TED Talk on this concept.
The first is that I really believe that we need a few more philosophers in the room when we talk about education. School Districts have entire teams of psychologists and our love of “educational research” will keep psychology departments at universities employed for years to come. Would love to talk about that one a little more.
The second has to do with Paul’s title and, in particular, to ask questions about measurement in the same breath that we ask about value.
Perhaps the value-measurement relationship could be seen in a different way. Maybe, just maybe, those things that are really valuable in education, in politics, in all of our social enterprises, are things that defy measurement. This does not change their value. Perhaps it actually increases it.
Grit and perseverance are things that are one of those ‘long term’ aspects of life. I would hate to see them experience the same fate as some of the other things that are currently being talked about in education: mindfulness, empathy, growth mindset. Good conversations, all of them. Unfortunately, however, they are becoming objects of curriculum development, conference themes, marketing and, in some cases, misappropriation, if not misunderstanding.
Sounds cynical, perhaps, but…
Your comment echoes the sentiment expressed in Dan T. Willingham’s most recent piece in American Educator (Summer 2016). He sees the complexity and the potential for throwing us off-track in the pursuit of improved student learning.
You have made a critical connection, Stephen. American researchers do link “grit” and ‘self-regulation” and that’s a positive sign. Up here in Canada, Dr. Stuart Shanker tends to focus more on “mindfulness” than on perseverance. That’s clearly reflected in the orientation of the P4ED “social-emotional learning” domain. Grit is relegated to a tiny piece of the proposed #P4Ed model.
A challenge in far too many discussions about education is the sloppy use of language. As a result too many disagreements are based on misinterpretations of language.
There are many ways to frame “non academic” or “non-cognitive” outcomes—see I just used two terms for the same thing.
What do we know?
– that the “non” influences student achievement”. I have seen this this summer in the reappearance of test anxiety among grad students
– in particular, metacognition breeds success
– there are many ways to identify components or competencies—I prefer the CASEL (collaborative for academic, social and emotional learning) approach because its five competencies are clear to teachers
– Carol Dweck’s Mindsets based on decades of wide ranging cross cultural research on why some students persevere and some give up is also observable in real classrooms
– these competencies or habits of mind (they are not skills per se) do require practice and quality feedback within an atmosphere of trust so that students recognize that their teacher really wants them to succeed. Such teaching and classroom dynamics is not easy since students bring attitudes and perceptions about learning, the subject, themselves, and their teachers that first have to be discerned before by both teachers and learners we move further. The Visible Learning of John Hattie and the Visible Thinking routines from Harvard’s Project Zero demonstrate research and practice links that actually work.
What do we not know?
– how to measure these beyond the context of a single classroom
– how to effectively convince teachers the relationships between social and emotional learning and academic achievement– in Ontario we have the Learning Skills section in the provincial report card that has been a hard sell in secondary schools
– how to convince decision-makers to support teachers and students rather than inundate them with competing mandates- real or perceived
What can we do?
As classroom teachers we can set up our own standards with the help of our students.
We can whenever we work with teachers demonstrate the connections.
There are a number of resources worth exploring- in addition to an ebook coming out in the fall (I am a co-author). It is fascinating that some of these are outside the education field but from economists such as Dan Kahneman and business such as Chip and Dan Heath and Dan Pink.
All very helpful in advancing the discussion, John. I look forward to pursuing your leads.
Diane Ravitch was invited by the NYT to write 300 words on teaching and testing grit . She wrote this
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/03/04/testing-students-true-grit/teach-resilience-dont-test-it
I just don’t see anything new here. Why do rich kids have ‘grit’ and poor kids don’t? I see the lack of grit as the demoralization that comes with poverty.
For many reformers or those who want to ‘individuaize’ every issue , their POV just does not allow them to get to the point where they see that the way to to help poor children succeed is to mitigate and eventually eiinate poverty.
There is no silver bullet.
Question of clarification, Doug: Could you tell us what you mean about “individualize every issue”? Thanks
Some people see every education problem a child may have in individual, often psychological terms (special ed ADD, … )Others see education more in sociological terms (capitalism, poverty, class size educational spending) as an issue of the organization of society.
You may have noticed I tend to the latter. I believe many on the other side cannot or refuse to see the forest for the trees.
As Larry Cuban famously said ” It is very difficult for the schools to make children equal when the rest of society is determined to make them unequal.”
I understand what you are saying, Doug.
At the same time would you agree that there is value in leaving room for consideration of the individual? My concern is that, if we continue to make broad claims and statements about some of the sociological dimensions that continue to confound us, we are permitting too many individuals (or groups of individuals) to continue falling through the cracks.
Case in point, if we assume that “rich kids have grit and poor kids don’t”, are we not preventing the conversation from moving to deeper and more nuanced level?
I’m not a big fan of claiming the middle ground, but a balanced acknowledgement of the importance of both forest and trees is important, I believe.
That may be why we agree some days and not others. I believe in solving the problems of the group 1st and what is left of individual problems later.
And I’m not sure that we can afford to work in such a linear way, Doug. There has to be a way of holding both the individual and the larger social units in view at the same time. I’m aware of how challenging this is, but I think that it is both possible and necessary.
Of course you work to help individual kids for their sake and their families but don’t expect to make any macro difference in the success rate with one-offs. You are bailing out the Titanic with a tea spoon.
The only way to improve national data on something like PISA for example, is poverty reduction. The 5% child poverty rate in Finland has far more influence on their results than anything happening in the schools.
Doug, on that we can agree. I do believe that the large systemic changes are going to be the most noticeable when we step back and look at things from the 30 000 ft vantage point. And I realize that you’re not saying that we should ignore the individual kids in our care.
But for teachers, parents, administrators “on the ground”, it’s not only the individual challenges, but the individual stories of success that point to, if not push, bigger picture policy options. That, I believe, is the way that change happens: inspired more by stories than statistics.
I’ve learned that in complex contexts and complex times, the “chicken/egg—”horse/cart” dualities aren’t very helpful.
The problem with my argument, however, is that it is usually the most advantaged that have the stronger voices, a more diligent sense of advocacy and a better record of success in affecting (or is effecting) change.
Daniel Willingham’s latest blog points to research showing that resilience training has dramatic benefits for disadvantaged college students (but not for the wealthy).
http://www.danielwillingham.com/daniel-willingham-science-and-education-blog/potentially-big-win-in-addressing-the-achievement-gap
I am familiar with some of this work in American colleges.
Being poor is a challenge but with suitable interventions not insurmountable.
(I was born into poverty and suffer from 2 disabilities).
Let’s find the bring spots and use this data to improve things.
Perfection? I leave that to faith traditions for inspiration.
I meant
Let’s find the “bright spots” . . .
With incomes polarizing and the 1% making off like bandits, we will be lucky to fight a rear guard action against further decline. More poor people means declining achievement as sure as night follows day.
We find the spots where we can make improvements. I do not believe in “miracle” cures; c.f. Donald Trump. Historical evidence supports this view. Ideologies may sometimes offer a vision, but they seldom provide the means to get there. The history of the last century and so far this one ought to show that.
Even the scientific revolution took a century to take hold for a majority of western thinkers. While I am not asking folks to slow down, be productive and stop making the same point. No one listens.
I agree but miracle cures JM. The corporate reformers are very frustrated that one after another of their miracle cures didn’t pan out. Miracle schools are always found to have manipulated enrollment, too many push outs … or similar.
You are also correct that poor kids can succeed. Thousand have succeeded but it does not mean that poverty is not a significant barrier to success. It is in fact THE major barrier.
Schools and teachers can make an important difference in some children’s lives but not nearly as much as we would like. As far back as Coleman, we knew the the major determinants of educational success or failure are outside of the classroom.
The Techies want a technological miracle in schools. Traditionalists ate convinced a return to 1950s education for all will work notwithstanding he fact that the data from that Era was FAR worse than today’s figures. Privatisers are convinced that a business-like approach and competition are the answer but vouchers are going nowhere and the OECD, a business think tank says privatization holds no hope of improving the situation.
After 40 years of teaching from grade 4 to York U, trustee work, MED, and provincial teacher union work I am convinced that the solutions involve:
-Finand style teacher prep
-Finland style poverty reduction
-smaller classes
-the downward extension of the school system to age 2.
-more and better PD
Yes and even higher remuneration for teachers with additional significant bonuses for working in poor schools. Candidates world Need a proven record of excellent teaching and be interviewed as if teaching in a poor school was both an honour and a promotion.
Lots of agreement on this last post, Doug
there’s an argument that traits are situational. a student will have ‘grit’ in one situation but not in another, ‘optimism’ in one situation but not in another. a student might be doggedly persistent in tracking virtual pokemons, but easily give up in math class.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7965613
to me, this is a strong argument for training students to generalize and maximize traits in ‘useful’ situations that they can already demonstrate in other situations. but of course that requires knowing something about the student, and doesn’t fit into the formal schooling model.
Great discussion by all..
I`m in my 60`s and see my kids in the world and my friends and families children.
The whole working world is based on winning or losing and honing resumes and interviewing skills.
Once you get the job,a win,you have to perform to keep it.
I think school should reflect the world..*%^& tough!
Their culture shock,being passed without grades etc…or graded only in very generic terms makes the youth of our day pay a hefty price…they suffer immeasurably while they begin to try to access and retain employment.
Philosophizing is wonderful,I love reading it and reflecting on it too but we need balance.
I was involved in a thesis study for a grad student in Regent Park setting years ago-she assessed the relationship between failure and success and the accompanying cooperative behaviour.
We had one child with very black eyes who didn`t want to give up his hateful behaviour even though he was improving..he was attached to the personality that defined him.
His mother however reported that at home he had become much more pleasant and co operative..
I think he felt hope..
He was totally illiterate in grade 3.