Reflection #4

Dan Schafhauser
8/6/16
Grit and Growth MindsetsInfluenced by Student Health
Through many studies, researchers have found that extracurricular activities
produce grit (hard work) or at least are a sign of one having a strong capacity for it.
A student wont be properly motivated to try new things unless they believe they
can succeed in these new things and this belief usually exists because of some sort
of struggle by the individual and an eventual breakthrough/willingness to get
through this particular struggle. This breakthrough will usually motivate kids to try
even more new things.
As Duckworth found through her study, following up on commitments as we
grow up requires grit and builds it (Duckworth, 2016, 232). Grit is an important
quality for students to have in order for them to achieve a lot through struggle, but
students will only achieve the appropriate amount of grit when they have enough
self-efficacy to believe they can achieve with it. Much is achieved in life through the
Virtuous cycle of struggle, followed by progress, followed by the confidence to try
something even harder. This motivates people to practice other hard things and
through Duckworths studies it is shown that we are the most successful when we
employ the most grit. Kids who were never given the opportunity to practice grit
through something such as extracurricular activities might not be a well-served to
be able to practice discipline or vigilance later in life. Unfortunately, budget cuts
have really diminished the amount of extracurricular activities available to lowincome students and thus has really widened the achievement gap (no money =
less extracurricular activities = possibly less opportunity for sustained grit).

Something that Duckworth emphasized constantly is with practice,

industriousness can be learnedthis is called learned industriousness. This goes
by the mindset that If you work hard youll be rewarded. If you dont you wont. The
way to cultivate in your students is to constantly show them the connection
between hard work (grit) and reward. If students see that if they try hard they will
succeed motivation will automatically flow. This can usually happen when students
feel they have something to prove.
From reading Stressing out the Poor, by Evans, we see that the affluent
have an advantage when it comes to having the physical, emotional, and mental
health that can contribute to grit/ a growth mindset. Because the impoverished
have a lot more going on when they are home and have additional/more adverse
problems compared to the affluent, impoverished people tend to have more
stressors. These stressors make some things at schooling more irrelevant and thus
harder. This can contribute to the tendency to not engage in grit (more than one
year in an extracurricular activity or something similar) in the academic setting
among the impoverished. Unforutnately, this starts the cycle of the opportunity gap
in a different light.
If students have good self-esteem and mental health they will usually be
more motivated to do things with grit and a growth mindset. Students are more
likely to employ grit and a growth mindset if they are healthier in other parts of their
lives such as physically or have a degree of relatedness to their environment (social
constructs); unfortunately, the affluent have more of a tendency towards this in
academia. This whole conversation has to do with the appropriate ways to foster
motivation in the classroom. Student motivation is a confusing topic, but one that is
important in being able to analyze how to grow a growth mindset in every student.

Students exist is a dynamic ecology so what motivates them is always

changing. Whats important in knowing how to motivate is knowing the student well
enough to understand how his particular web of causality affects the way he/she is
motivated to achieve: this is one of the focuses of student-centered learning
(Nakkula, 2012, 3). There are many factors of motivation such as intellectual,
emotional, and behavioral. Embracing student voice is a great way to motivate
students in any academic context. The predisposition to be unmotivated and
disengaged from school is strong in students who dont feel very welcome at school,
who cant see their identities reflected in the curricula, who feel like their teachers
arent very affirming to their identities, etc. Nikkula says that social context or
location can strongly inform the amount of motivation students possess (4). If
students are already motivated because of the social context they dont need the
academic context to be additionally motivating for them. It is important for teachers
to realize that students may need personal and social engagement first however,
before they can become academically engaged. All this about motivation shows
this: first, no single motivational pathway or type of engagement guarantees
academic achievementeach student is a unique blend of individual stories and
needs, each differently positioned to have their story heard and their needs
expressed (8). This means there is no better way for teachers to motivate their
students and emphasize grit in their lives than by knowing who the students
actually are and developing that relationship.
Additionally, students psychological connection to school affects motivation
levels and participatory behaviors. Feeling welcomed into, included in, and validated
by school can exert a profound effect on a students capacity to engage and his
efforts to achieve. A more student-centered approach would be to ascertain what

motivates individual students to achieve in a particular class and then enlist the
students help in identifying other factors that might elevate their motivation,
factors that may include changes to the context or changes to the individuals
beliefs and behaviors (10).
Looking at motivation intellectually shows that students build motivational
beliefs in relation to a domain (a certain subject) and they use these beliefs to
orient them in new learning. Students who believe intelligence is a fixed entity will
have difficulty in a particular activity because they will interpret it as a lack of
intelligence in that domain in themselves even though thats not true. I identify with
this.

I can identify with this statement above. When I was in high school I believe I
was mainly motivated when I feel I had the intellectual ability to do something well.
Admittedly, I do not think my sense of self-worth was progressed enough back then
for me to believe that I can do just as well as everyone else putting the same
amount of hard work in, there was a subconscious belief that no matter how hard I
tried I wouldnt do extremely well because of the way I thought and thus there
wasnt much point in putting all of my effort into my work. Blanket statements
about students intelligence may serve as disincentives and I believe a lot of my
past teachers said things like this.
What research on motivation and intelligence beliefs shows us is that a
crucial component in being learner-centered is to help students learn to persist, to
associate their achievement with their effort (not their smartness). In education, the
shift away from behaviorist explanations of human behavior toward more
constructivist ones coincides with the growth in the belief that the best and most

potent motivators are intrinsic to the student: they are held internally and valued by
the individual at the level of feelings and desires, whether expressed to others or
not (13).
Intrinsic motivation is so important to achieving a lot as a student. This all
flows from competence, autonomy, and relatedness being stressed in the classroom
for the student and the ability for them to have self-determination. When this
happens, motivation is intrinsic and the student believes he can achieve, grit and
zeal are more realized in the classroom.

References
Duckworth, Angela. (2016). The Playing Field of Grit. New York, NY: Scribner.
Nakkula, Michael. (2012) Motivation, Engagement, and Student Voice. New
York, NY: Jobs for the Future.