NPR Ed – Anya Kamenetz
“If you’ve followed education in the news or at the book store in the past couple of years, chances are you’ve heard of “grit.” It’s often defined as the ability to persevere when times get tough, or to delay gratification in pursuit of a goal. Alongside growth mindset and self-control, grit is on a short list of not-strictly-academic skills, habits and qualities that researchers have deemed essential. And that research has quickly made its way into the hands of educational leaders eager to impose accountability measures…But now Angela Duckworth, the scientist most closely associated with the concept of “grit,” is trying to put on the brakes…Here’s the problem. Much of grit research is based on self-reporting. That is, if you want to find out whether someone is gritty, you simply ask them to grade themselves…but sometimes the hardest workers actually have the lowest opinions of themselves.”(more)