Angela Duckworth: Why grit is not enough

Angela Duckworth, Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the bestselling author of Grit, who has made a name for herself studying the science of effort and achievement, wasn’t always so driven - a fact she was reminded of recently when she came across a copy of her Year 11 report card.

“I was like, what?” she says, recalling her shock to see that she had been getting mostly Bs, rather than straight As. Considering Duckworth went on to study neurobiology at Harvard College and later neuroscience at the University of Oxford, on a Marshall Scholarship from the University of Pennsylvania, how did she turn things around?

“I had an amazing English teacher, named Mr Carr,” Duckworth says, “who gave me a B, by the way, not an A, but in that English class, I remember an intellectual awakening.”

“All I wanted to do was to please Mr Carr,” she adds. “He was quite simply the best teacher ever. He had such passion for literature, and he saw potential. He looked at you and saw what you couldn’t see in the mirror. In me, he saw a reader, he saw a writer, he saw a budding intellectual.”

Under Mr Carr’s influence, Duckworth’s ambition grew. Her grades started to go up: “The next year it’s As and I’m taking more challenging courses.”

It was in her final year of high school when she was taught by Mr Carr again that she had an epiphany about her own abilities. “I was looking at Faulkner or Hemingway, and I was like: this is interesting, this is important, I can do this. Oh, I know what to try next,” she remembers, “And I really think it changed my life.”

New lessons on Grit

This story illustrates how grit - a quality Duckworth has defined as the combination of passion and perseverance to pursue long-term goals, which she says is consistently demonstrated by high achievers - isn’t only shaped by your character, but by the physical and social circumstances you find yourself in.

In her new book Situated, she theorises that these external factors help explain why effort is necessary, but not always sufficient, for achievement - and why critics who argued that belief in “grit” overlooks challenges in people’s environments may have been right.

Ten years on from the publication of Grit, we sat down with Duckworth to find out more about this, and how it relates to schools.

Tes: You are best known for your work on grit. Can you briefly explain what grit is?

Angela Duckworth: When I became a secondary maths teacher after graduating from college, I was astonished to see how important effort was for achievement - for who would learn algebra and who didn’t.

I wanted to understand this more because I felt that I was an enthusiastic teacher, but not always the most effective in terms of bringing my students to their potential and maximising the quality and quantity of their effort.

Grit is doing the things you love with consistency and with resilience

So, I went to look at the positive outliers, not just academically but in other domains like sports, music and leadership, and found that these high-achievers had this common denominator of a kind of stamina. They really stuck with things. They had not only perseverance, but they also had passion.

I think people often make the mistake of assuming that grit is kids forcing themselves to do things that they hate. Grit is doing the things that you love with consistency and with resilience.

In terms of the education setting, I hope what’s been communicated is that grit can be encouraged; it can be cultivated. Not that it’s yet another way to sort kids into high to low, but that some of the young people who may not be as successful as we would want them to be could be if they were able to sustain effort and interest toward their goals.

One criticism of grit is that it has been simplified into a narrative that says that children need to be able to bounce back from adversity, and if they can’t, then they’re somehow lacking. What are your thoughts on that?

First, I think this is fair, and I think that we should be having this conversation.

I was just talking to professional sports teams in the US, and they said, “We came to your door because we think young adults today are less gritty; what do we do about it?” Part of what they’re saying is that these kids wilt in the face of feedback. At the first blush of imperfection, they quit and go home.

We should listen to those voices, without being dismissive. If there is an observation from professional coaches, parents or educators that resilience is not as developed as it should be, then it’s worth listening.

I will say, as somebody who studies grit, that saying, “Oh, the problem is that they lack grit,” is, at a minimum, unhelpful. What does that mean? Why do they lack grit? We should have curiosity about the phenomenon itself.

Do you think it’s true that young people have become less gritty than they used to be?

I don’t know whether there is a generational problem with grit. I don’t know whether kids lack grit in a way that they didn’t 10, 20 or 50 years ago, because I don’t have any data on that.

I do think it’s important, though, to recognise that there are data sets on other psychological constructs like anxiety and depression, and those studies do show generational changes.

Therefore, we should at least be open to the possibility that this generation does struggle more with doing hard things, which correspond to the items on the grit scale. For example, “I am a hard worker”; “I finish whatever I begin”; “Setbacks don’t disappoint me for long”.

I don’t think blaming anyone for not having grit, whether they’re 12 or 42, is helpful. But it is possible that there have been changes in the ability of kids to finish what they began, work hard, set goals and so forth.

If that is the case, why do you think that might be?

One of the reasons that’s brought up by people that I talk to is they worry that the environments kids are growing up in today are not conducive to these behaviours that I just described.

They’re not saying these kids are genetically less gritty. And I have to say, again, that without data and without a time machine, I have to be modest. But if you want my speculation, I do think the environments kids are growing up in today are not always conducive to grit. In particular, access to mobile phones.

It’s great for children to be totally into geology and then decide to be a dancer; that’s how you grow

When you get to be somebody who’s truly a paragon of grit, you have this voluntary obsession with what you’re doing; it’s what you want to be thinking about a lot, if not all the time, and it’s what you want to be working on. That focus is, in a way, the opposite of scrolling through TikTok videos, where you’re skimming the surface.

I don’t want to say primary and secondary school kids should have a voluntary obsession that excludes other things. Developmentally, primary and secondary pupils should be quite broad and quite experimental and quite fickle, frankly. It’s great for them to be totally into geology and then like, no, I want to be a dancer. That’s how you grow.

But I think if your brain is constantly filled with one amusement after another, not connected and not cumulative, that makes it very difficult to develop a passion.

You recently worked on a US initiative called Phones in Focus. Can you tell us about that?

It’s a research initiative sponsored by the National Governors Association, which is the organising group for the 50 governors of the 50 states in the US. The initiative aims to identify the most effective school policies around phones and relay that to legislators.

We’re currently expanding and rebranding as “Screens in Schools”, because the emerging policy issue in the US is screens that aren’t phones, and by that I mean computers that are issued by the school system.

On phones, we’ve published one study as a working paper, which looked at the use of Yondr lockable phone pouches in schools, and the findings were nuanced: mobile phone use did decrease, and teachers reported more engagement - but standardised test scores didn’t improve.

Physical separation from mobile phones seems to be better than when pupils can use it on and off

We’re now working on a larger study that is going to have data from one in two middle and high schools in the US. It’s by far the largest survey of educators in history in any country, and I think it’s because educators really, really care about this issue.

We’re analysing the data, and I’ll rush to say it’s cross-sectional, so I’m not making any causal claims, but from the preliminary results, it does seem that there’s something good about any form of “away for the day” model that involves physically removing the phone so that it’s out of sight and out of mind.

Whether it’s through pouches or having to keep your phone in your hallway locker, physical separation from this temptation seems to be better than when you can use it on and off.

In your new book, you explore how the external factors in a person’s life are just as important to their success as their individual mindset. How does that connect to your ideas about grit?

I think there are four positive thoughts that gritty people have: this is interesting; this is important; I can do this; and I know what to try next.

After spending the first half of my career identifying grit as a behaviour, and the positive thoughts it springs from, I take it even further back to say: well, where do those positive thoughts come from?

Yes, maybe some people are gritty, and therefore they’re more likely to have those thoughts, but much of what we think and therefore much of what we do comes from our situation.

When you are in a certain place with certain people, you are more likely to have certain thoughts. The thoughts, in turn, shape your behaviour.

I am interested in the situation, not because it is at odds with anything that I’ve discovered before about grit and where it comes from, but because it’s the origin story for these positive thoughts and these positive behaviours.

If you don’t understand the power of the situation, going back to criticism, you can just say “well, these kids don’t have grit”, as though that’s the problem.

This, presumably, has implications for the environments we create in schools and the situations we put young people in within them?

Right. You might say that because I have studied grit for so long, why would I be in favour of restrictive school phone policies? Shouldn’t the kids just be gritty? Aren’t we weakening them by making the school do the work for them?

But I would say, no matter your age, always put yourself in a situation that makes hard work easier. Otherwise, the lesson is that it’s fine to have a situation that’s your enemy. It’s not. All children need a situation that’s their ally.

That’s complicated by the fact that some children will obviously be coming from a home where the situation is perhaps not as ideal as others, right?

Yeah, I think it is. I spent quite a few years developing a 10-item checklist of the things children need called the Necessities Index. It has items like, “I have access to fruits and vegetables every day”; “There is a quiet space in my home where I can study or rest”; and “If I had a serious problem, I would have someone to talk to”.

In my data, which is nationally representative data here in the US, one in two young people in this country lack one of these straightforward necessities.

Therefore, you could say that kids are not equally situated. Some kids are situated for a life of success much more so than others.

What can schools do to help those children who are not so well situated for success?

One possibility is to look at what a particular child is missing, and try to give them that at school. If they don’t have fresh fruits and vegetables at home, you try to provide breakfast and lunch at school. If a child doesn’t have anyone at home who can help if they can’t understand their homework, then maybe the school is going to have to provide somebody to help them with their homework.

I know that schools are being asked to do more and more. I know we are asking them to do too much, but I do think the reason for that is because schools are the only institutions that reach all children.

Another thing schools can do is look at the different dimensions of situations. In my book, I outline four: a physical dimension, two layers of social and then a cultural dimension.

I think that if you want to be set up for a successful life physically, you need to have objects around you that are not bad for you, like ultra-processed food, and that are good for you, like fresh fruit.

And then, socially, there are two layers. Peers is one layer, and for young people in particular, it’s about having the mindset that peers are important in life, because young people are spending more and more time alone.

Therefore, it’s helpful to give them the reminder that with other people you’re smarter, with other people you’re stronger, with other people you’re more accountable to your goals.

The more of a growth mindset school you have, the more grit and achievement there is

Mentors are the other social layer. Research shows that having just one mentor in your school can very significantly increase the chances that you’ll be successful after you graduate from high school. So, we need to help young people to find their Mr Carr.

The last layer is culture and is relevant to schools in particular. I think the one dimension that’s been well studied, although there are others, is that schools that have more of a growth mindset culture versus fixed mindset perform better, in my research.

What that looks like is that mistakes are OK here. Teachers believe that everybody can learn. Teachers care more that we’re learning than that we’re performing. The more of a growth mindset school you have, the more grit and achievement there is.

So, I think these four elements give something of a framework for educators in understanding why the scientist who has advocated for grit is saying that kids also need to be situated in order for grit to make sense and for grit to pay off.

What’s the key thing you would like schools to take away from your work?

There’s this long-standing debate of should we fund schools and think about social structures, or is life about hard work and determination and inner resolve? And I want to say it’s both - at the deepest, most intertwined level. To me, you don’t get one without the other.

When you put a young person in a situation that encourages their thinking to be positive and optimistic and goal-directed, then you will get effort.

Let’s put them in schools, in classrooms and in playgrounds where they are thinking, “This is interesting. This is important. I can do this. And I know what to try next”, because watch how hard they’ll work. Watch how engaged they’ll be, and watch what they can do.