Putting the goal back into grit: Academic goal commitment, grit and academic achievement

Abstract

Grit has recently been challenged for its weak predictive power and the incompleteness of its measurement. This study addressed these issues by taking a developmental, person-oriented approach to study academic-related goal commitment and grit and their effects on academic achievement. Using longitudinal data among Finnish eighth and ninth graders (n = 549, 59.4% female, age = 14–16), the longitudinal changes in grit and academic goal commitment profiles were investigated through latent profile and latent transition analyses. Four profiles were identified across two grades: High committed-persistent and moderate consistency (~ 17%), Moderate (~ 60%), Low committed-persistent and moderate-low consistency (~ 8%) and Extremely low committed-persistent and moderate-low consistency (~ 12%). The students in the High committed-persistent and moderate consistency profile had the highest academic achievement of all the profiles when controlled for gender, socioeconomic status, conscientiousness, and academic persistence. The results revealed that students’ profiles changed between the eighth and ninth grades, with more than one-third of the High committed-persistent and moderate consistency adolescents dropping from this group. Further analysis showed that the profiles varied by educational aspiration, gender, and socioeconomic status. These findings imply that the combination of grit and academic goal commitment influences academic achievement; however, this combination is less common, unstable, and affected by internal and external factors. The study provided important implications on the weak grit effect and the ways to improve it.

School burnout and psychosocial problems among adolescents: Grit as a resilience factor

“…However, as argued by Duckworth, grit, unlike resilience, is more about coping with daily routine challenges than severe adversities (see Perkins‐Gough, 2013). Moreover, grit is the process of pursuing self‐defined life goals (Duckworth, 2016; Tang, Wang, Parada, & Salmela‐Aro, 2020), whereas resilience does not necessarily relate to goals. Nevertheless, given the common coping process and measurement overlap between grit and resilience (Goodman et al, 2017), and that this study takes a broad approach to resilience, it is of interest to examine whether grit would work as a resilience factor for at‐risk individuals.…”

“…Third, our findings imply that grit would be a good target for adolescents who are at risk of school burnout, especially boys. Research suggests that building a mastery goal‐oriented school culture (Park, Yu, Baelen, Tsukayama, & Duckworth, 2018), forming highly committed educational goals (Tang et al, 2019), building high education aspiration (Tang et al, 2020), and holding a strong life purpose (Hill, Burrow, & Bronk, 2016) are evidence‐based practices for developing grit among adolescents. Thus, school practitioners, policy‐makers, and other stakeholders could consider these practices in the future.…”

Situating Expectancies and Subjective Task Values Across Grade Levels, Domains, and Countries: A Network Approach

“…Specifically, in 9th grade, math utility value became closer to achievement (though still very weak) and intrinsic value, whereas expectancies became less connected with achievement (still moderately) and cost. In Finland, 9th grade is the final year of compulsory education; afterward, students need to decide to continue their education in academic high school or vocational high school, or go to work (Tang et al, 2021). Thus, at this conjunction point, students possibly revisit the utility value of math and start to associate it with achievement and intrinsic value.…”

Students’ and Teachers’ Perception of Cyberbullying and Its Influence on the Academic Grit of Senior Secondary School Students in Onitsha South LGA, Anambra State

“…Literature on academic grit benefited a lot from the work of Duckworth and Quinn (2009) that saw academic grit as central to various academic-oriented outcomes. In other words, academic grit explains fluctuations in academic motivation, academic engagement, school attendance and attrition tendencies [20,21,22] (Duckworth et al, 2019).…”