For
this month’s newsletter, I have invited Jae Cody (AVHS World Language Teacher
and STEM Advisor) to write a reflection on a fascinating study she had read as part of our Data Blitz
Team which meets the first Thursday of every month.. The study was Christopher Kirchgasler’s “True
Grit: Making a Scientific Object and Pedagogical Tool” published in AERA in
August of 2018. Here is her description
of the study along with some reflections on the idea of grit.
In an
effort to understand the role that “grit” has come to play in educational
discussions, Kirchgasler traces the idea of grit back to American pioneers.
Grit was considered a key reason that white settlers were successful in
settling the frontier. Their success was contrasted with the natives living on
the land, and the idea of American “rugged individualism” was closely
associated with the idea of grit and perseverance in “civilizing” the land.
The
thread of grit being associated with progress and civilization extends to the
early 20th century and the idea of scientifically studying behavior in
psychology. As Dewey and others tried to study child development and find ways
to optimize growth and learning, grit became a way to differentiate between
rational scientific principles and superstition and tradition in child-rearing.
While
earlier thinkers considered grit to be something found in only some
individuals, today’s educational thinking pursues grit more as a trait that can
be developed and refined. It is being used in KIPP schools as well as in the
PISA study and in learning outcomes for school reforms in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Kirchgasler identifies several problems with the modern use of “grit” as a
school outcome.
- Grit has become a scientific truth. In these programs, success
and failure are attributed at least in part to students’ perceived level of
grit. This establishes a “right” kind of child and make it easier to blame
students (and their lack of grit) for failures.
- It gives grit preference over other positive attributes
(creativity, social awareness) held by many students.
- It directly links grit to performance and economic
progress.
As I
was reading, I was reminded of a story from NPR that I used to play for my AVID
students (“Struggle for Smarts: How Eastern and Western Cultures Tackle
Learning”). It is on how “struggling” is perceived in Asian and American
schools. The author observed classrooms in both countries and found that
struggling in American schools was generally considered a sign of weakness or
low intelligence, whereas students in Asian schools were expected to struggle,
and their families and teachers used language that demonstrated that struggling
was a sign of strength.
Much
of the article was influenced by the ideas around fixed and growth mindsets.
However, at the end, the reporter describes a study done by an educational
researcher. First graders at schools in the US and in Japan were given an
impossible math problem to solve. In the US, students took an average of 30
seconds to stop working on the problem. In the Japanese school, the researcher
stopped the study after an hour because every student was still working.
As a
teacher, I often find myself wishing that my students were more persistent,
that they would push themselves beyond the first unknown word in a text and try
to get the big picture even when it is not 100% clear. That said, it is
important to acknowledge that persisting or being “gritty” for the sake of
being gritty is not always good. At some point, there is value in realizing that
a problem is impossible, that the effort being put forth in one activity is
taking away from time in something else, and that a goal is no longer as useful
or as meaningful as it once was and should be changed. Grit is important, but
not more important than self-awareness, creativity, and all of the other
attributes students bring to our classrooms.
Full newsletter here.
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