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

Draft
1. Introduction
The test score accountability movement has pushed aside many of these so-called
“non-cognitive” or “soft” skills, and they belong back on the front burner.
– John Easton, Director of the Department of Education
Institute of Educational Sciences
(Easton, April 14, 2012, p. 19)
How can we best prepare children and adolescents to thrive in the 21st century—an era of
achievement gaps that must be closed for the benefit of everyone in society, rapidly evolving
technology, demanding and collaborative STEM knowledge work, changing workforce needs,
and economic volatility? The test score accountability movement and conventional educational
approaches tend to focus on intellectual aspects of success, such as content knowledge. However,
this is not sufficient. If students are to achieve their full potential, they must have opportunities to
engage and develop a much richer set of skills. There is a growing movement to explore the
potential of the “noncognitive” factors—attributes, dispositions, social skills, attitudes, and
intrapersonal resources, independent of intellectual ability—that high-achieving individuals draw
upon to accomplish success.
In this brief, we take a close look at a core set of noncognitive factors—grit, tenacity, and
perseverance. These factors are essential to an individual’s capacity to strive for and succeed at
long-term and higher-order goals, and to persist in the face of the array of challenges and
obstacles encountered throughout schooling and life. Meta-analyses of a growing body of
correlational research suggest that these factors can have just as strong an influence on academic
performance and professional attainment as intellectual factors. For example, academic
performance is similarly correlated to both the characteristic of conscientiousness
(“dependability and will to achieve”) and intellectual ability, at both the secondary and
postsecondary levels of education (Poropat, 2009).
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