Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance - U.S. Department of ...

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practices for fostering these competencies. Educators should also be aware of the trade-offs in
terms of technology requirements and flexibility in design and use by teachers.
Need for Structural and Systemic Supports, Advocacy, and Parental Support
While the evidence is growing that there are actionable best practices and programmatic
approaches to promoting grit, tenacity, and perseverance in many settings, there remain
tremendous barriers to implementation. A ubiquitous theme in our interviews and literature
review is the need for structural and systemic supports. Some of the major barriers cited in the
interviews were:
• Accountability-driven school cultures emphasizing gains on standardized tests may be
inconsistent with the practices necessary to promote these qualities.
• Many teachers feel they already have too many standards to cover without adding what can
seem to them to be more content. In most schools, short school periods are densely packed
with content standards. Students may not have the time to seek assistance, reflect, or iterate
on their work.
• Many teachers, particularly in urban districts, have as many as 160 students per day. This can
be an insurmountable barrier to allowing teachers to provide the constructive personalized
feedback and guidance that can be critical to students’ perseverance.
• Most teachers do not have access to professional development with explicit guidance for how
they should integrate these practices and approaches into their own unique settings with their
particular student populations. Most preservice and professional development programs do
not currently explicitly address these competencies.
• Many school cultures have not implemented and supported practices to promote valuing of
these types of qualities and some believe they are the responsibility of the parent rather than
the school.
Our informants had several specific recommendations. Most centrally, it is essential to provide
professional development for administrators and teachers, as well as curriculum materials and
technological supports. Also, as time and resources for thoughtful reflection, feedback, and
iteration can be an important support for perseverance, other potentially high-leverage strategies
may be restructuring school days to have longer periods and increasing school staffing so that
teachers have a more manageable number of students. Outreach and inclusion of parents and
other community members also can provide important bridges.
Conclusion 4: In this accountability-driven culture, there are a wide range of systemic and
structural barriers that prevent broad implementation of many best practices and programs.
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