Few people are likely to find this interesting but me, but since we've discussed Grit in a few threads here and it has been in the news over the past few years (especially recently) because school districts are misguidedly falling all over themselves trying to incorporate grit into their curricula and selection procedures.
Anyway, some of my research has involved grit and, overall, I've never really been totally sold on it being a distinct or "new" construct or really all that special or uniquely predictive of anything. To me, it's always seemed like a new name for an old thing (conscientiousness/ resilience). Lipstick on a pig, as it were.
It's a problem in the social sciences, in my opinion, that a lot of research is nothing more than a "self-licking ice cream cone" and there's too much poorly substantiated vanity research that catches on because it sounds cool, sexy, or feeds into our quick-fix and wish-fulfillment biases (and just happens to make the researcher who came up with it a lot of money).
Enter "grit," which fits that description quite well, in my opinion, especially given how Duckworth keeps changing her definition of it over the years depending on the criticism it's gotten.
There's about to be a meta-analysis (an analysis of a bunch of prior studies) published that strongly suggests that grit is little more than "old wine in new bottles," barely distinct from already existing aspects of personality and whose impact has been largely exaggerated and misrepresented as more important than it actually is.
Anyway, I thought some of you might be interested so here's an article from NPR that also includes the audio from the "All Things Considered" piece about it:
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016...-duckworth-responds-to-a-new-critique-of-grit
Also an open-access link to the manuscript for the upcoming journal publication:
https://www.academia.edu/25397556/M...eta-Analytic_Synthesis_of_the_Grit_Literature
I think it'll be interesting to see the fallout, if any, that this creates within the education and business sectors, who have been so busy recently gobbling up every nugget of grit they can and adopting it into their systems without ever stopping to ask, "Is this actually a thing?"
Anyway, some of my research has involved grit and, overall, I've never really been totally sold on it being a distinct or "new" construct or really all that special or uniquely predictive of anything. To me, it's always seemed like a new name for an old thing (conscientiousness/ resilience). Lipstick on a pig, as it were.
It's a problem in the social sciences, in my opinion, that a lot of research is nothing more than a "self-licking ice cream cone" and there's too much poorly substantiated vanity research that catches on because it sounds cool, sexy, or feeds into our quick-fix and wish-fulfillment biases (and just happens to make the researcher who came up with it a lot of money).
Enter "grit," which fits that description quite well, in my opinion, especially given how Duckworth keeps changing her definition of it over the years depending on the criticism it's gotten.
There's about to be a meta-analysis (an analysis of a bunch of prior studies) published that strongly suggests that grit is little more than "old wine in new bottles," barely distinct from already existing aspects of personality and whose impact has been largely exaggerated and misrepresented as more important than it actually is.
Anyway, I thought some of you might be interested so here's an article from NPR that also includes the audio from the "All Things Considered" piece about it:
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016...-duckworth-responds-to-a-new-critique-of-grit
Also an open-access link to the manuscript for the upcoming journal publication:
https://www.academia.edu/25397556/M...eta-Analytic_Synthesis_of_the_Grit_Literature
I think it'll be interesting to see the fallout, if any, that this creates within the education and business sectors, who have been so busy recently gobbling up every nugget of grit they can and adopting it into their systems without ever stopping to ask, "Is this actually a thing?"
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