Is 'grit' in education all it's cracked up to be?

More than a decade after academic and psychologist Angela Duckworth released her first paper on the notion of grit and its application to education, a series of recent studies have revealed weaknesses in past evidence supporting grit and in survey questions that measured it within people, according to the Hechinger Report. Duckworth defines grit as "a combination of passion and perseverance for a singularly important goal,"some research shows it's not as impactful as other soft skills, it isn't closely linked to academic achievement and it her survey questions don't ask as much about the long term. Duckworth, while admitting there were some problems with her survey questions, said she wouldn't think grit is the biggest determinant of student success and that grit scores were meant to be predictive of attaining longer-term goals.While Duckworth doesn't seem to intend to be changing her grit scale in the immediate future, her critics will make their cases at the upcoming America Educational Research Association meeting in April. Meanwhile, The Hechinger Report notes, Duke University psychology and neuroscience professor Rick Hoyle created a scale of his own that reportedly addresses the faults present in Duckworth's. When new education innovations arise, some educators may hope to find a way to pin the idea to the prospect of raising grades or tests scores. In a data-driven, high-stakes testing environment, teachers and school leaders look to assessment data or other quantitative measures; however, education is a complex endeavor because it deals not only with imparting knowledge, but also with equipping students with the skills needed to process and use that knowledge to attain a long-term goal.