Grit: A Key to Academic Success
The Utilization of Grit in Education
The concept behind an education system is that it has a well-thought-out structure designed specifically to cultivate grit among students. If you think about it, the average number of years that students attend school is 13, and add another 4-plus years if they advance into an institution. So, of course, it’s likely the best time to be a natural cultivator of grit, helping students throughout their youth to the start of early adulthood and for the rest of their lives. With each advancing grade, there’s going to be new and more challenging material that students must learn, which allows students to further develop their grit.
The point of education is ultimately, for some, to acquire their long-term goal of getting a degree in their desired field. For those aiming for a master’s or even a doctorate, they will need a lot of grit. With multiple short-term goals, students are challenged to show that they can reach higher in their education. It’s passing the SAT, studying for multiple tests, achieving a high GPA, conducting research for a project, and graduating college. None of this would be remotely possible without a little perseverance, resilience, and a lot of caffeine.
Where’s the proof?
The question is, does grit have an impact on educational performances in students? In recent studies, “Grit is associated with a range of positive outcomes in education” (Christopoulou). There has been a positive link between grit and academic performance reflected in measurements such as GPAs, SAT scores, retention, and other positive educational outcomes. For the measurements to be accurate while we conducting the research we need to answer these three questions:
- What educational outcomes is grit associated with, and which ones can it predict?
- Are the two aspects of grit (effort and interest) playing the same role in educational outcomes?
- Which variables are predictors of grit in education?
Currently, there have been at least 29 studies that have taken into account these three questions (most of the study’s statistics are based on university). Here are the ones who have conducted the research:
Akin & Arslan
Objective: To explore the association between grit and four achievement goals
Eskreis Winkler, Shulman, Beal, & Duckworth
Objective: Finding a relationship between grit, other individual difference variables, and retention
Yeager, Henderson, Paunesku, Walton, D’Mello, Spitzer & Duckworth
Objective: Does self-motivation in school promote academic self-regulation on tedious schoolwork?
The impact of grit in education based on their findings:
- Grit has a positive relationship with learning-approach goal orientations and a negative to learning-avoidance, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance
- Correlates with both academic conscientiousness and school motivation
- Remained a significant predictor of graduation after controlling for all measured individual difference variables and situational variables. (SAT, GPA, etc)
Even though the research on grit and educational performance is still new there’s enough evidence based on previous findings that this topic can still be researched.
The Setup: Cultivating grit for the future
Life is like building blocks; everything has an order, and it’s no different here. Everything has a reason, even the need to push through years of education, and it’s for the preparation for students’ future careers. The traits that students acquire from the grueling years of school are to build up the necessary characteristics to be successful in their jobs. Characteristics such as motivation, performance, retention, and dedication to completing a long-term goal. The best thing that all these traits have in common is that grit has an impactful effect on maturing these vital traits. With years of students persistently pursuing their education, the significance of their grit becomes crucial in its application within the workplace.