Angela Duckworth's Unpacking Grit

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Angela Duckworth’s “grit” research began as a simple question while teaching seventh grade math. She asked herself why some of her students were comprehending difficult concepts better than others? She concluded it is not IQ that is the determinate but something else. To pursue this question, she left the classroom and changed her career entirely; she became a psychologist. She participated in research studies of various situations and contexts in the hopes of understanding what predicted success the best. She concluded that something can predict success in children and adults of all ages, and it is called “grit.” Grit is the ability to persevere and follow through with long term goals (TED, 2013). In Unpacking grit: Motivational correlates …show more content…

If the child is praised for his or her intelligence, he or she will embrace the “fixed mindset” that one’s intelligence determines their success. It is crucial to praise the child’s strategies, efforts, and progress and how they approach the problem at hand. Dweck and colleagues created a math game that did just that. The game did not reward the child for getting the answer right; it rewarded the child for the progress, strategies, and efforts the child exerted while trying to solve the answer. In one study Dweck and colleagues did, they told one group of students when they learn something new and difficult and exceed their comfort zones, the neurons in their brain grow stronger. They informed the students that this will make them smarter. In the group of students they told, their math scores increased in comparison to the group of students who were not informed (TED,

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