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Importance of perseverance for students Essay
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Importance of perseverance for students Essay
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Angela Duckworth’s “grit” research began as a simple question while teaching seventh grade math. She asked herself why some of her students were comprehending difficult concepts better than others? She concluded it is not IQ that is the determinate but something else. To pursue this question, she left the classroom and changed her career entirely; she became a psychologist. She participated in research studies of various situations and contexts in the hopes of understanding what predicted success the best. She concluded that something can predict success in children and adults of all ages, and it is called “grit.” Grit is the ability to persevere and follow through with long term goals (TED, 2013). In Unpacking grit: Motivational correlates …show more content…
If the child is praised for his or her intelligence, he or she will embrace the “fixed mindset” that one’s intelligence determines their success. It is crucial to praise the child’s strategies, efforts, and progress and how they approach the problem at hand. Dweck and colleagues created a math game that did just that. The game did not reward the child for getting the answer right; it rewarded the child for the progress, strategies, and efforts the child exerted while trying to solve the answer. In one study Dweck and colleagues did, they told one group of students when they learn something new and difficult and exceed their comfort zones, the neurons in their brain grow stronger. They informed the students that this will make them smarter. In the group of students they told, their math scores increased in comparison to the group of students who were not informed (TED,
As Dweck explains, children who are praised for their intelligence does not want to learn hence develop a fixed mindset. A fixed mindset is where people believe that their qualities such as talent and intelligence are essentially fixed traits. Such people would only concentrate on documenting their intelligence instead of looking for ways for developing the same. In addition, these people make the assumption that their intelligence would make them successful. On the other hand, a growth mindset is where people are aware that it is possible to develop their abilities through hard work and dedication. When I was in Grade 7, a teacher encouraged all students that they all had the ability to perform well in science. After the initial interaction, the teacher was aware that a certain percentage of the class performed way below average; yet, he did not water down their spirit. I remember the way he used to acknowledge even some insignificant improvement made in his tests by comments such as “You are making good progress so far”. Primarily, this teacher focused on the perseverance, strategies, and efforts the students put towards improvement as opposed to praising talent (Dweck 5). The result was that we changed our attitude and focused more on self-improvement.
Commending students effort encourages them to challenge themselves. Some may argue that complimenting children for their intelligence has the same
Both were given a workshop with skills on how to study, but one was also given lessons on what a growth mindset was and how to develop one. The group given the lessons on growth mindset was extremely fascinated by the thought that they could control how much knowledge they were capable of learning. Overall, the growth mindset group excelled while the control group continued to not do so well. After receiving these results, Dweck was so inspired that she developed a growth mindset computer program called “Brainology,” that would be available to students all around the world. Dweck concluded that it’s extremely important to teach students that it takes hard work to achieve
important aspect in our lives. After reading the articles “Top 5 Reasons most people fail”, “The Truth about grit”, “5 Winners teach us how to learn from failure”, and “How failure makes us stronger”, it really showed me how important grit is in our lives and the lives of many. The Pursuit of Happyness is based on a true story about a man, Chris Gardner, who demonstrates many aspects of grit. I believe the three main aspects of grit is having the perseverance to keep going, taking action without hesitating, and keeping a positive mindset.
In “The Downside of ‘Grit’: What Really Happens When Kids Are Pushed to Be More Persistent?”, Alfie Kohn; an author and lecturer, claims that not everything is worthwhile especially when going at a task for an extensive amount of time. He asserts that ‘grit’ (the passion and determination when pursuing long term goals) is becoming less persuasive and credible. Kohn states that grit can cause serious issues that have real consequences. Important goals about life have changed significantly suggests Kohn. With goals comes the ability to be persistent, the author mentions. He describes that persistence is one characteristic among many that could become valuable when wanting to reach a goal,
There are two types of people in this world. There are people like students who work diligently to achieve the highest grade possible, athletes who put in hours and hours of practice so they can make the starting team, young adults who climb the ladder to get to the top of their company, and many others doing whatever it takes to make their dreams and goals become a reality. There are also people in this world who do the bare minimum in order to graduate with a passing grade or to make a paycheck that is possible to live on. They are doing only “just enough” to make it another day. What is the difference between the two? Standardized tests, natural talent, and IQ rankings have been used in the past to determine how successful a person will be, but a new trait has come into play that ultimately determines how much a person achieves during their lifetime. Grit is the most important trait a person
Also, in Carol Dweck’s research article “Brainology”, she states the subtitle “Transforming Students’ Motivation to Learn”. She dishes mindsets and achievement, how do students learn these mindsets, and so on… … Dweck suggests, “Many students believe that intelligence is fixed, that each person has a certain amount, and that’s that. We call this a fixed mindset, and, as you will see, students with this mindset worry about how much of this fixed in intelligence they possess”. Many students believe that the challenge encountered in learning is a threat to their growth path. She put forward two different minds of the ideological study contrast, the finds showed that students studied with a growth mindset were more interested in learning and
“Over time, grit is what separates fruitful lives from aimlessness.”-John Ortberg this is a great quote that shows how grit is necessary in being successful in life. Grit is key to getting want you want and achieving dreams.
After reading the article, “The Myth of ‘I’m Bad at Math’” I began to think about my past learning experiences and realized that my opinions on this subject have changed drastically over the years. For the most part, I felt like this article made a lot of good points, especially considering my own experience with believing in incremental vs. fixed intelligence. Basically from the beginning of my schooling I was taught to think that some kids were just smarter than others, and that that couldn’t necessarily be changed. I think this had a lot to do with the fact that I was considered a “smart” kid: I caught onto most learning concepts easily, so people told me that I was “smarter” than other kids. If I had been a child who learned a different way, I think that I would have been taught to believe in the incremental model of intelligence very early on as to not discourage me from growing as a learner (which was exactly what teaching kids that
Every parent desires to have a child who will be successful in life. In “Brainology” author, Carol Dweck explains that there are consequences for praising children for their work. Dweck also explains that there are different types of mindsets that enable an individual’s development. She claims that there are two types of mindsets that people have. In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work ( Dweck 1). Furthermore growth mindset individuals love learning and are resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. (Dweck 1). One more theory, Dweck mentioned was fixed mindset. The author states “In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence
The definition of grit is simple; it means being passionate about long term goals, and showing stamina to pursue them, but should students in public schools have a class dedicated to a grit-focused curriculum? This has become a major topic of discussion among teachers and mentors. Angela Duckworth, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, claims grit is not a fixed quality but one that can be developed. Many disagree with her statement. Grit is something everyone all have within themselves, but some just do not utilize this characteristic as often or as well as others. Grit is a puzzling concept. Duckworth has had an obsession with grit for over a decade. Her obsession started when she visited West Point,
Results of students who received praise for intelligence: The students in this category had negative results after receiving praising. When asked afterwards if they wanted to do the same level of problems or try more challenging ones, they chose the task that would allow them to look smart and do well on. Consequently, while telling a child how smart he or she is, we are sending a message to not take risks and just look the part. Afterwards, these children were given a hard task, which they performed poorly on, and they know longer liked the problems and did not want to practice them at home. Children also felt “dumb” and when given the initial task (in which they did well), they performed significantly worse. Lastly, their opinions of intelligence reflected that it was an innate capacity as though you cannot improve.
Up until the 1960’s, it was believed that people were either born with or without intelligence. UC Berkeley professor Mark Rosenzweig, performed a series of experiments with rats demonstrating how environment influenced rat behavior. His findings changed society’s outlook of inherited intelligence. Rosenzweig's results presented the idea that all youth have the capability to succeed, although it depends on how the individual develops their own attitude or belief toward their personal intelligence. Carol Dweck, a psychologist from Stanford University interpreted Rosenzweig's experimental results and separated the issue into two outlooks of personal intelligence. “Some students start thinking of their intelligence as something fixed, as carved in stone” (Michelle Trudeau). Dweck perceived this as a fixed mindset of intelligence. “Others think intelligence is something you can develop your whole life” (Student’s View of Intelligence). She calls this the growth mindset of intelligence. Dweck wondered if a child’s belief about their own intelligence could contribute to their academic success. She conducted an experiment analyzing the correlation of these elements in 373 seventh grade students who struggled in math. The students were randomly assigned to attend a workshop. One seminar taught how to study well, while the other educated students on the expanding nature of intelligence of the brain. The second group discovered that “the brain actually formed new connections every time they learned something new, and that over time, made the individual smarter" (Student’s View of Intelligence). Those who attended the neuroscience seminar and believed that they could grow and advance in their cognitive development, saw a steady increase in academic performance by the end of the semester. They received better overall grades than the other group
Praise of intelligence had backfired. Dr. Dweck had suspected this would happen. She explained that quote, "Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control...They come to see themselves in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child's control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to failure," unquote. Children who believe intelligence is the key to success discredit effort and don't seem to understand its importance. When labeled "smart," kids think, "I'm smart, I don't need to put effort." Dr. Dweck repeated her experiments on different groups of students, and results were the same, regardless of socioeconomic status, age, or gender. Preschoolers even showed the same
Everything that you will accomplish will only come if you are persistent, dedicated, and hard working. Those qualities make up a person’s grit, which should be taught in college composition classes at Central Methodist University.