Duckworth, Angela. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. (New York: Scribner, 2016).
Intrigued by the question of why some individuals excel and others fail to reach their potential, Duckworth studied individuals who have reached the top of their field. Through this process she identified the quality of “grit” which encompasses four psychological assets:
- First comes interest. Passion begins with intrinsically enjoying what you do.
- Next comes the capacity to practice.
- Third is purpose. What ripens passion is the conviction that your work matters.
- And, finally, hope. Hope is a rising-to-the-occasion kind of perseverance.
At one point, Duckworth and her mentor Martin Seligman met with Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America. Together they developed and tested a hypothesis:
Teachers who have an optimistic way of interpreting adversity have more grit than their more pessimistic counterparts, and grit, in turn, predicts better teaching. For instance, an optimistic teacher might keep looking for ways to help an uncooperative student, whereas a pessimist might assume there was nothing more to be done. To test whether that was true, we decided to measure optimism and grit before teachers set foot in the classroom and a year later, see how effectively teachers had advanced the academic progress of their students…
One year later, when Teach for America had tabulated effectiveness ratings for each teacher based on the academic gains of their students, we analyzed our data. Just as we’d expected, optimistic teachers were grittier and happier, and grit and happiness in turn explained why optimistic teachers got their students to achieve more during the school year. (page 177)
Associating grit with personality traits of pessimism or optimism runs the risk of reinforcing the belief that good teachers are born and not made. But grit, like many other qualities of good teachers, can be developed. This is fortunate, because teachers and administrators need a certain level of grittiness to cope with the barrage of contextual factors that complicate their work. When teacher burnout is so prevalent—particularly among beginning teachers—cultivating the quality of grit may strengthen one’s capacity to pursue one’s passion for making a difference in the lives of others.