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

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schooling—mastering conceptually difficult material, getting prepared for college, graduating
high school, getting into and completing college, and transitioning into a viable career.
Scholars and practitioners are also exposing challenges emerging more uniquely for the middle
and upper class. Education researcher Denise Clark Pope, in her 2001 book, Doing School: How
We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed-Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students,
provides research and vivid examples of how middle class students are being pushed so hard to
get into top-tier universities that their high school years are filled with intense stress, and they are
not being adequately prepared for a thriving adulthood. In our interview with Principal Dominic
Randolph of the Riverdale Country School in New York City, he expressed a similar sentiment
about the more privileged students coming through his private school. He had deep concern that
these students knew how to work hard to “do school” but were not developing the life skills to
persevere in the face of the challenges they would face in the “real world.”
Challenges of Underserved Students in the United States
While all students face challenges, one of the biggest national issues for education is the achievement gap for
high-poverty students. As Paul Tough discusses in his book, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the
Hidden Power of Character (Tough, 2012), it is well documented that students who come from high-poverty
backgrounds are particularly likely to face high stress and limited social support in the home for academic
achievement—all of which can undermine perseverance toward both short-term and long-term goals in education
and into adulthood. In the early years, stress and deprivation can impact the development of executive functions
(i.e., self-regulation, problem-solving, and attentional control) such that students do not develop the skills
necessary for the transition to elementary school. At this age, they must learn to persevere on increasingly
cognitively demanding tasks and comply with norms and rules. Deficits in these skills can have a downward
spiraling effect on behavior and achievement.
In adolescence, Farrell et al. (2007) investigated the problematic situations particular to urban African American
middle school students whose contexts entail depletion of neighborhood infrastructure, local financial resources,
and social capital, as well as rises in crime, drug use, and violence. They found that in addition to experiencing
many of the same problems as other young people, these youth are likely to lack essential material support,
experience victimization, and not have basic needs met. They are also likely to lack the developmental assets of
supportive and functional parents, teachers, and other community adults. While left to negotiate adolescence
with minimal guidance, they also face the additional challenges of being surrounded by adults coping with
complex stressors.
“Stereotype threat” is a risk for students of groups with prevailing stereotypes of poor performance in school,
such as ethnic minorities and girls (in math). African American students, for example, are often aware of a
stereotype that African Americans do poorly in mathematics. When faced with an evaluative situation—such as a
math test—students may experience what Steele and colleagues call stereotype threat, a threat to self-esteem
that entails a felt pressure and anxiety that his or her poor performance may confirm the negative stereotype.
(e.g., Steele, 1997; Steele & Aronson, 1995). This anxiety diverts attentional resources from the task at hand,
undermining perseverance in the face of difficulty.
Underserved students thus face contexts that may only sparsely promote (or undermine) perseverance and
provide limited opportunities to develop critical psychological resources that set them up for success. They may
also lack the social resources to get academic help when needed and guidance on how to navigate the
academic institution to become successful at graduating high school, getting into college, and beginning a
professional career. Ethnic minority students may also be particularly prone to feelings of alienation and lack of
belonging in the educational institution—both of which can undermine their desire to persevere academically.
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