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

Draft
There is still much important work to be done. We are just beginning to explore the potential of
technologies that are already available, and many new technologies are on the horizon. There is a
need for strong interdisciplinary research that integrates and iteratively improves empirically
based best practices in promoting and/or teaching grit with the development of digital and
blended learning environments.
Conclusion 10: There are important opportunities to leverage new and emerging advances in
technology (e.g., educational data mining, affective computing, online resources, tools for
teachers) to develop unprecedented approaches for a wide range of students.
Recommendation 10: Researchers should work closely with technology developers to continue
to explore how to integrate best practices into new and emerging digital learning environments
that are well positioned to promote grit, tenacity, and perseverance, and key psychological
resources (mindsets, learning strategies, and effortful control) for a range of purposes.
Need to Expand Assessment Capabilities and Methods
Similarly, the field needs to continue to expand assessment capabilities and methods. As
discussed in Chapter 3, assessments of grit, tenacity, perseverance, and associated psychological
resources are necessary for a range of purposes—as practical tools for educators and technology
developers, as tools for researchers to refine concepts and theory, as tools for program
refinement and evaluation, and as diagnostic indicators identifying vulnerable students. There
already exists a range of methods—self-report, informant report, school records, and behavioral
task performance—to capture these constructs as dispositional tendencies or sets of processes
unfolding over the course of learning. Each of these methods has important benefits and also
drawbacks to consider.
Within the larger theme of assessment, four subthemes emerged.
• The advancement of measurement methods is highly integral to the field’s movement toward
conceptual clarity. As discussed above, the field will benefit from research to clarify the
many constructs and definitions in the literature, understand perseverance across different
types of goals and academic disciplines, in different types of contexts, and longitudinally
across developmental stages. Such research will require evolving measurement methods that
can detect and discriminate important constructs.
• As discussed in the Expanding Evidence report and throughout this report, the advancement
of digital learning environments provides new opportunities for mining the data produced
when students work in digital learning environments, and the emerging field of affective
computing allows for multiple channels of data integrating behavioral performances, selfreport,
physiological responses, and eye tracking. Video games also provide an “exhaust
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