Against grit

Give Up 

New research shows that grit can be costly and unnecessary.

What if it’s more important to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, and know when to walk away?

For a recent study published in the Journal of Research in Personality, researchers from the University of Southern California and Northeastern University put hundreds of participants through a series of three studies on grit. In each, the researchers quizzed subjects about how “gritty” they are, based on how much they agree with statements like, “Setbacks don’t discourage me” and “I finish whatever I begin.”

The first test was a set of anagrams, or word scrambles, which participants were rewarded for solving by being entered into a $100 lottery for each correct answer. Sprinkled amid the do-able anagrams were 16 unsolvable words and 21 very difficult ones, like “kismet.” The participants who ranked higher on the grit assessment attempted fewer anagrams overall—a sign they didn’t skip the difficult or unsolvable ones like their less determined peers did.

Next came a computer-game exercise, which the researchers rigged such that some participants would feel like they were losing for much of the game. The grittier subjects worked harder when they were losing, but not when they were winning.

For the final test, the researchers gave the subjects a math game, which was also rigged so that some of the participants felt like they were fighting an uphill battle. They also gave the participants an offer: When things got tough, they could either drop out of the experiment and get $1 for their troubles, or they could press on and get $2 if they won, but nothing if they lost. Grittier people didn’t solve any more math problems than their lazier counterparts, even though they felt more optimistic about the test than the others. They were, however, more likely to continue the game when they were losing, even though they risked walking away with nothing.

It would seem, then, that grit comes with a downside.

Barry's Rifle Range on grit

In all my classes, I required my students to answer warm-up questions at the beginning of class. I used two types of questions:. One was a review-type question to apply what they recently learned. The other required them to some apply their prior knowledge –or what was familiar—in a new or unfamiliar situation. Some may view this as an inquiry-based approach, or an application of the “struggle is good” philosophy that adherents of Common Core seem to say is necessary to develop perseverance in problem solving, as well as the all-important and frequently undefined “grit”. I view a short amount of struggle as appropriate provided that explanation is provided shortly after. That way, even if students do not succeed in solving a problem, most are receptive to explanations that they might otherwise tune out.

Saturday, December 20, 2014
Conversations on the Rifle Range, 19: Grant’s Tomb Again, Alice in Wonderland, and the Eternal Question

Asking students to spend a few minutes applying prior knowledge to a new problem arouses curiosity.

That's a good thing because, according to Jaak Panksepp, curiosity is one of the seven core emotions driving all human behavior. He calls it "SEEKING."^*

SEEKING may be the core emotion, in fact, the emotion without which the other six don't work.

So: arousing curiosity about math!

Good idea.

Panksepp's fantastic book: Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions

And I see he published a new book in 2012!

Ordering it now -----

The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions by Jaak Panksepp and Lucy Biven


^*It's probably more accurate to say that curiosity is a facet of SEEKING.

Speaking of agency

Speaking of agency .....

Giving a student control over their learning has theoretical and intuitive appeal, but its effects are neither powerful nor consistent in the empirical literature base. This meta-analysis updated previous meta-analytic research by Niemiec, Sikorski, and Walberg by studying the overall effectiveness of providing learner control within educational technology, the characteristics of instruction along the continuum of learner control, and elements of the instructional environments that may play a role in the effectiveness of educational technology. The search terms identified 85 distinct articles, 18 of which met the inclusion criteria (29 effects were computed). The overall effect of including learner control within educational technology was almost zero (g = 0.05), and were also near zero when examining most characteristics of control and classroom contextual factors. Moderate effects were reported for providing learner control within social studies/history courses and for comprehensive technology instructional programs. The effects were larger for behavioral outcomes than academic outcomes, but both were small.

Updated Meta-Analysis of Learner Control Within Educational Technology
Abbey C. Karich, Matthew K. Burns, and Kathrin E. Maki
Review of Educational Research
September 2014, Vol. 84, No. 3, pp. 392–410

Yet another fruitless attempt to transfer adult authority to children.

The Windward School on "self-determination" and direct instruction

My copy of The Beacon, The Windward School's newsletter, arrived today. Here's what the heads of school have to say on the subject of grit, resilience, self-determination theory, and the like:

Autonomy in the classroom does not necessarily mean students roaming at will between workstations, working in groups, and self-directing their own learning. Autonomy, more essentially, is seen in the student who attends to her work with a personally chosen sense of purpose and self-agency. (In this context, we refer to agency as the power taken by an individual to make "decisions regarding their preferences and actions.") Although not obvious, the direct instruction methodology that guides the Windward classroom is fundamental to the development of autonomous learners.

Every direct instruction lesson begins with three elements:

• the presentation of an aim for the lesson;
• the review of prior lessons, clarifying how the current instruction connects to knowledge and skills already learned; and
• a motivation that gives students an anticipation and incentive for the day's lesson.

By ensuring that every lesson has a purpose, builds upon prior knowledge, and engages the motivation of the students, teachers invoke a volitional engagement of students with the curriculum. Students attend to their work and stick to their work with grit, not as a result of fear or dread or the promise of extrinsic rewards, but because they discern and embrace the purpose of their learning.

The Windward School costs ... at least $40K/year, I think. Somewhere in there.

It's incredible, when you think about it.

The only children in Westchester County who can count on receiving direct instruction every day at school are kids who a) have a learning disability and b) have $40K to spend on tuition at The Windward School.

Crimson Wife and Anonymous on teachers instilling grit

Crimson Mom and Anonymous.

Think how much grit kids will develop once you flip all the classrooms.

Birth of a meme

The new character education, coming soon to a district near you: grit.

Students need grit, and it's the school's job to foster grit.

Because grit is more important than knowledge.

Also: grit is best fostered by means of teachers telling students to do something they don't know how to do, then refusing to answer questions. In any other context, that would be rude, but never mind.

Our new superintendent, the one who was to bring accountability and every-child-every-dayness to our district, is a big fan of grit. Hosted a book club for parents on How Children Succeed the week after winter break.

He's a fan of Tony Wagner, too, while we're on the subject of expensive new superintendents with bad instincts. Vintage, pre-crash Tony Wagner, even better. (With increasing abundance, people want unique products and services!!!! So it's time to redefine rigor!!!)

Wrong again.

Here's Hirsch. And here's Peter Meyer.

At Education Week:

Unlearning Learned Helplessness

"I need help," several students said in their geometry class at Esperanza Academy in Philadelphia.

"I don't think so," teacher John Roman replied.

Roman had just given students a handout with several unmarked triangles on it, and asked them to determine which of the triangles were congruent. He also gave them patty paper (tracing paper), and said that it might help them complete the task. He did not, however, show or tell students what to do with it.

[snip]

[K]nee-jerk calls for help are indicative of a common reason students don't learn to their potential: learned helplessness. They encounter an unfamiliar task (or word, formula, etc.), and immediately shut down or seek help.

The good news is that because it's learned helplessness, it can also be unlearned. And because students have learned it from enabling educators like me (until I stopped spoon-feeding them), we're in the best position to help them unlearn it....Turns out, for example, that John Roman's students had sufficient prior knowledge of congruent triangles. They were also more than capable of figuring out how to use patty paper to perform the assigned task. What they lacked was a problem-solving mindset. They lacked qualities such as determination and resourcefulness.

Yet students will only acquire those qualities if we put them in situations that require those qualities. ...After commiserating for a couple of minutes, a few students picked up the patty paper and began tracing triangles. Soon all students did this, with no help from Roman besides subtle reminders to a few students that the patty paper might be helpful.

The value for students of experiences like this has more to do with confidence than content. The more they learn with little or no help from us, the more they believe in themselves and their abilities. Sure it's important for students to learn math and science and social studies. But the real lesson for kids when teachers do what John Roman did is that confusion is where learning begins, not where it ends.

And the lesson for us as educators is that students will only unlearn helplessness when we unlearn helpfulness.

Bad character comes from sages on stages.

Good character comes from guides on sides.

A likely story.

---

For the record, actual learned helplessness has nothing to do with the scenario described above.

The term comes from Martin Seligman's experiments with dogs in the 1960s, which entailed giving the dogs electric shocks and inducing a state of "learned" helplessness, learned in the sense that after being repeatedly shocked with no means of escape, the animals learned not to even try to save themselves, not even when the avenue of escape was directly in front of them. Instead, when the shocks came on again, they trembled and cried, and displayed all the signs of human depression. The experiments were cruel, though I don't think the experimenters knew they were cruel, going in.

I was taught the learned-helplessness experiments in college, and the image that formed in my mind of the cowering, crying dogs too distraught to exit the shock zone -- or even try to exit -- has stayed with me.

(On the other hand, having since experienced a very similar scenario on two separate occasions, I now see things a bit differently. But that is a story for another day.)

For a teacher to appropriate the term "learned helplessness" as a description of his own students is wrong in so many ways.

UPDATE 3/17/2014: See Crimson Mom's comment. (And don't miss the never-to-be-missed Anonymous.)