Angela Duckworth Conversation Oct 11, 2016

I'm glad that you were able to attend our conversation with dr. Angela Duckworth who is the Christopher H Brown distinguished professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania she has a very interesting developmental trajectory as I understand that she left the demanding job as a management consultant in New York City to teach mathematics to seventh graders in in the city was this part of a alternate routes teacher certification program actually Wendy Kopp of Teach for America didn't directly get me my first job but not through teacher murmur I was too late for the application so we I just sort of snuck in the back door to the school that didn't have a math teacher weeks before it was supposed to open I asked because my daughter was a product of the New York City Teaching Fellows program which is kind of like an alternate routes program and she's had a very successful career as in special education but and then she left the classroom after a number of years and she became increasingly interested in self regulatory and self control issues really non-cognitive kinds of things that that are that influence student outcomes and development long term developmental outcomes success in school retention in college and the like and she she's continued her work and as you know she's opened up a character lab at the University of Pennsylvania which is designed to think about both the science and practice of character development and I think she'll talk with us about these ideas she's probably most famous now in the popular literature for her recently published book about grit which he defines as the as perseverance and passion for long-term goals and so Angela's agreed to speak with us today to have an informal conversation that mostly focuses on her perspective about how these ideas might help inform our practices as folks committed to promoting the development of teacher candidates who obviously are being trained to positively impact the students that they serve and we wanted to get her perspective about it in advance three questions were given to us I told Angela that I would share these questions as a starting point but this is a conversation so you should feel free to chime in to share your thoughts but I ask because we are recording this session that if you have a comment please raise your hand we'll give you a microphone one person speaks at a time so this is not a debate for the presidential election one person speaks at a time and and with that way we'll be sure to have the entire recording and everyone's thoughts on tape so welcome thank you so I'm really looking forward to the conversation so this first question has to do with preparing our prospective teachers and their influence on student long term developmental outcomes and you know one of the things our schools what we should be doing in teacher education programs is change training prospective teachers so so that they're better able to not only promote the academic learning of their students but their commitment to their long term developmental goals and unfortunately these qualities oftentimes aren't emphasized in teacher education program you know we tend to focus on making sure that they know how to teach mathematics or they know how to teach social studies and the like but these character issues are oftentimes really not front and center and they play a significant influence on the long term outcome so how do you think we should be thinking about this issue especially with respect to preparing teachers who are going to be working with kids who come from different backgrounds who have diverse life experiences who have very different identities than kind of usually the middle-class kid so it's a great question and maybe I'll begin with a definition of character because we've all used that word character but sometimes we mean Darcy from Pride and Prejudice and sometimes we mean other you know ways that we use the word character and I think the way that I'm using it is closest to what Aristotle defined as character that is all the things that a grown-up or a child does or thinks or feels that are beneficial to the self and to others it's really a broad definition it is everything from curiosity and creativity to emotional intelligence and perspective-taking and of course what I study self control delayed gratification grit it's everything that you would want your own child to develop as they grow into adulthood so that they can contribute to society and also live a happy life for themselves so that very broad definition is is how I define character other people by the way hate the word character for various reasons like it sounds fixed which I don't believe that it is and neither did Aristotle and you know maybe it sounds moralistic which is not a connotation that I embrace but just for clarity's sake when we use the word character I really mean it inclusively of all those things that honestly I've never met a teacher who didn't say yeah I would like my kids to to have that or to develop that so I think there's a lot of consensus really around you know the idea that there's a lot of stuff that we want a kid to do including writing well and reading well and doing mathematics but also treating other people well and you know knowing how to control their emotions and their attention and so forth so that's what I think about what character is in terms of teacher preparation I was a teacher for not a long time for collectively about five years in various public school systems including New York City where I started I also ran a summer school for little kids middle school and a sort of high elementary school kids and that was for two years so I would say that for a fraction of my adult life I was actually with kids on a daily basis and I didn't do such a great job of intentionally developing the competencies that I'm talking about I tried as I think every teacher tries but I was often doing things like lecturing them about their futures and it generally doesn't work when you lecture a kid about how you know unless you start studying you know you're not we're going to be it's like in one year out the other and I think that as a psychologist what I would like to see in teacher programs and honestly in culture generally is a much more sophisticated enlightened approach to developing character and kids so so what can we do beyond lecturing the first step I think is to understand you know if a kid is doing their homework or the kid is not doing their homework lectures are just kind of a like okay well then I'm gonna tell you that you should do your homework but I think first you have to understand why do some kids do their homework and why do some kids not do their homework what what motivational factors are at play what experiences have shown them the value of homework and actually I would argue there are skills involved in managing your life and maybe the kids like want to do well but they don't know how to organize their time to ask a good question in class so I guess to say very some merrily what obviously could be unpacked if we had more time than we do today I think teachers should be exposed to the scientific information about human motivation about self-control delayed gratification grit curiosity there's a science behind every single one of those character strengths that I mentioned and the understanding of where these things come from I think is at least one step toward being a better teacher better than you know just telling kids that they ought to have more of these things as I did for so many years myself and and good education schools for example have a course in you know if you don't like the word character call it metacognition you know like the word metacognition call it non cognitive strengths if you don't like that call it social-emotional learning call it whatever you want but I do think that there are lots of psychologists like me who would be very eager to help design such a course for graduate schools of Education for ongoing professional development so that these insights from the laboratory could cross over into the classroom I can say thank you know I think the historical pattern in education schools and I suspect in psychology departments is that they sometimes think they solve a major problem by developing a course right and what when in fact what you need is a systemic programmatic focus to ensure that these ideas are not only acquired but actually applied and generalized because I do study the literature on Trent a transfer and I know that unless it systematically program you shouldn't expect to get it so these are skills have you ever thought about it at the programmatic level and I'm I'm going to confess that I am not very good at or inclined to think systemically though I recognize it's exactly what we should all be doing but I'm not a policy oriented or systems thinking kind of run like a psychologist so mostly what I'm what I'm interested in and what I tend to be good at is like understanding like what happens in between your ears but obviously you know we all live in the culture and in ecology and and I think I know enough to agree with you that if you don't have if if you just try to change one kid in isolation but nothing about that kid's world has changed it's not ritualized the things that you want them to do it's not that they looked at their left and they looked in their right and everybody's doing that and you know it's not modeled by their teacher and you know they don't see it you know happening anywhere else like in the hallway of the class you know of the school it won't stick and I think one major lesson from psychology with your well acquainted with is that there are a lot of short-term things I mean we've all experienced it right like you go on a diet and it's going great and then you're not on the guy anymore or you know like I don't wake up every morning go to the gym and it works out great until you stop doing that and so what question is like why doesn't behavior change stick I mean even if it's something that you know is good for you we all know we're supposed to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day but like you know it often doesn't happen why not why is why is good behavior not sticky and I think we don't have a full answer to that question but we know that when it is sticky it is because it's reinforced at a systemic cultural level when you go to France which is where my family recently went on vacation and I remembered my high school French you know really rusty but I could like kind of order lunch you know at the end of about a week and a half my French was so much better obviously and then when I got off the plane because when you're in France everybody speaks French and every it's like exactly what you want like everything reinforces it you order in French they talk back to you in French you listen you know at the end of the trip I was even dreaming in French and I think that's what we want our kids to do they need to be in a system in ecology where it's not just like you have a 45-minute lesson plan on goal-setting and then you go off and like nobody talks about goal-setting and nobody else but but everybody is learning that and everybody's doing it your teachers modeling it and you go to the next class and it's reinforced and you know the way that you do everything essentially creates a culture where it's not even that you have to think about it very intentionally thank you are there any specific follow-up questions related to this general theme that we've been discussing that anyone would like to ask at this time so I think the question that was posed was directed at how can we help our pre-service teacher so then instill this in their future students I'm concerned about instilling these types these type of character traits in our pre-service teachers they come through our program and I'm not sure that I'm seeing the grit the perseverance and I feel like there are so many factors that influence what they're able to or what they're willing to do and for our class and our classes I'm so I'm wondering if you have any ideas there's this James Baldwin quote about how children may not listen to their elders but they don't fail to imitate them right and I think that was just this intuition that of course psychologists nod their heads and they say oh right that was the research at Stanford by Al bandura showing that we model each other you know we model each other almost without knowing that we're modeling and in fact when you see these videos of very young children the famous experiment at Stanford that your question brings to mind is called the Bobo doll experiment and some of you may know it but essentially behind a one-way mirror psychologists observe a child playing with one of those inflatable Bobo dolls you know you can you can you know knock it over it comes back up again well half of the kids before they get to play with the Bobo doll watch an adult kind of just you know play with the Bobo doll is if it were like any other toy and they're you know sort of like you know throw it and catch it and then the other half of the kids get to watch an adult play with the Bobo doll and like beat it up and like you know try to destroy it and the question is what will children do when they have a chance to play with this stall having seen a role model do one of two things and it's really striking because the kids do exactly what the totes did you know they they imitate them and these are very young children and and I think we all do that right we sort of end up talking like the people around us we end up doing that and that's why I think it is imperative for many reasons that if we want our children to be curious gritty nice honest people then of course they need adult role models in the classroom who are all of those things now how you would get there if you don't feel like we're there yet obviously you know a simple question with it with a probably complex and long answer but but I will say that in terms of grit in particular I think that grit can be encouraged in young people who are entering teaching or otherwise first you have to think about the passion part of grit and I think the two major engines for passion and you know we're all we're all in life together so you might just reflect a bit on your own level of passion and maybe you'll tell me like I'm so passionate but I love what I do and if you do say that I would say there's probably two reasons why the two drivers of passion are one is interest like it's interesting to you I mean psychology is so interesting to me I have these articles on my desk and I just want to read them I just think it's interesting like oh and when I go to Starbucks and I'm waiting for my you know overpriced coffee not overpriced but they're very expensive my very expensive coffee you know I'm interested in like oh that baristas you know seems to be happier than that but like that's interesting like I wonder why and I'm watching them I'm so interested you probably have other interests maybe you're interested in sports maybe you're interested in baking maybe you're not interested in those they maybe you're interested in the election coming up maybe you're not but interest is the one of the drivers of passion and so you know what is it that brought people to teaching in part I think they must be interested in learning and interested in kids and so that intellectual interest or curiosity I think can be encouraged the second driver if you sit next to me on the train if you come back with me to Philadelphia and you sit next to me on the train I always ask the person next to me do you love what you do which is an unusual question to be asked on Amtrak but but when that person says yes I love what they I do it's not just because they're interested it's also because they feel that it's purposeful that it is beneficial to other people and I'm not kidding there's no exceptions to this in my experience so even when you you know you talk to hedge fund managers right and you're like oh do you do you love what you do the ones who say I love what I do they will tell me why it's interesting to be a hedge fund manager and they will also tell me how it's beneficial to humanity I'm like really how can hedge funds be benefit and they'll tell me what they in their view feel like it so I think if we want teachers to be optimally passionate we have to make sure that there are ways that they can be intellectually curious about their work that it's that it's interesting to them in the same way that you know the other interests in their lives grab them and that they would want to think about it on Saturday and on Sunday and then secondly we have to make it possible for them to really feel like it's benefiting the world teaching obviously is supposed to benefit the world but I think what happens to a lot of teachers including what happened to me on occasion and certainly when I was before teaching I was a tutor and a volunteer I often felt and I don't know if this speaks to your personal experience that I wanted to help kids but it wasn't working I mean I was like tired you know I was working a lot of hours but it's not I mean I see these kids and I'm like yeah pretty much did not help you like I you know I'm here but it's like I'm not changing your life so so we need to create a school culture and a system and you know a lack of bureaucracy and a curriculum and so forth so that all that good intention has somewhere to go and if you have teachers who are interested in their work and feel like when they come to work it genuinely helps like the kids are getting better they're going places and they're able to do their best work I think there you'll have teachers who themselves are grittier and then it will I hope be a model for the students in their classroom multiple microphones and there's more microphones just following up on that thought then I'm wondering what schools or approaches that you may have seen for as educational approaches or philosophies that seem to create those kind of environments for children it's a great question about you know what are the schools where they you know they left an impression upon me you know what most recently comes to I mean I've worked with schools that look very different actually so two of the schools that I know best are the Kipp charter schools that serve mostly low-income kids and they are pretty you know formal places so it there they are not the kind of like butcher you know leg up on the chair you know lean over and you know be kind of you know casually addressing your teachers by first name that's like not the culture of those schools at the other extreme I've worked a lot with a Riverdale country school which is one of the highest tuition private schools in the country which makes it one of the highest tuition private schools in the world and these kids are from from many backgrounds but many of them are from extraordinary privilege and that has a different culture so when I sat in the back of a Riverdale classroom I was like wow these kids are literally drinking cappuccino in history class and they are having their you know foot up on the seat because more comfortable for them and they're kind of you know it's very casual so oftentimes I think schools that are promoting character strengths like can look superficially very different but the two elements that they invariably have are high expectations and a culture of of genuine affection for the kids by high expectations I mean that the work is never done it is never good enough it's not like a hundred percent smiley face like that was good it's like that was wonderful I think the topic center could be a little sharper like this is great you got all the problems right that means I need to make the assignments harder right they're just they're never done and actually you know this high challenge environment is also in exactly how I would describe places like West Point or you know sports teams that are really good at encouraging people's best there they're just it's not an easy place to be but the second element of that is the the love part right I mean tough love is one way to think of this so these places are tough in some ways but they are genuinely loving they are affectionate places kids feel safe they you know kids are like dogs they know right they know if you care about them or not and I think in a in a sports team or a classroom or in a military academy where people genuinely feel honored respected and and loved you know when I send my 14 and 15 year old to school all you know I hug them and I'm like I love you so much like you're so awesome drive me crazy sometimes but like I totally love you that is essentially what we want for our kids and our classrooms tough because you know what that can be better and you can be better and we get but unconditional love right and an unfavorable affection those are the two common elements I think two great cultures any other questions related to this theme hi I was also a middle school teacher in New York City for several years and the work have worked with both Kipp schools and uncommon schools who have done similar work and one of the things I was just wondering about is given what we know about the trauma associated with poverty and often with minority status that microaggressions that come with it both of those schools have grit report cards and character report cards and I've seen kids feel like it's yet another bludgeon that an institution comes out and says they're not good enough in this particular capacity and I was wondering what you would suggest or how to support that process Bor yeah I can say more about what those report cards are and the evolution of them and how I really feel about them because I was part of this whole process so the charter schools asked me the charter schools Kipp in particular asked me to create a character growth card for them so they originally caught it a character report card but then they wanted to suggest that this is growable so they called it growth card like growth mindset and so I said okay well what do you mean by that like what are you looking for and they said well when we talk it kids about you know grit or curiosity or zest you know it's like very abstract for them and they don't have any idea what we really mean so we want there to be you know indicators or sentences that are like really specific like you know I know how to show appreciation to other people or you know I have tried something really hard and given up you know in the last six weeks right and I said okay well that makes sense and I said what's this for and we were talking a little bit about consequential validity this idea of like well the idea of whether a growth card works or not depends on what it's for like what's it supposed to do and they said well we want it to be feedback for these kids so that they can you know just like an athlete is like oh how many seconds was that lap okay good I'm going to use that information to grow like okay well that that could make sense so so what we did was we developed a growth card where there are indicator sentences that our kid life sentences like things that would be a way of expressing or showing that you have grit or curiosity or these other things in the classroom the important thing for me was that that it not be like a real report card in other words it doesn't go in your record and I was very wary of the possible motivational backlash or the downside of this that you didn't think about when you design the thing but like oops it really did that and here's what I think they found in in the cases where it is used simply as a conversation starter like a reflection piece like oh this interesting this is what your teachers are observing about your strengths and also areas where you need to develop I think that can have very positive consequences but it can be very negative too right so you might think like hey I'm going to tell you that you really need to work on you know finishing what you begin and hey that's going to motivate you but it might not motivate the child it actually might make them even less motivated than they were so I'll tell you where we are right now which is that with those schools we're trying to figure out you know what is the optimal way to give kids some feedback because I really do believe everyone learns from feedback but how do you do it in ways that are that are encouraging and not discouraging and also to are sensitive to the you know the lives these kids lead so one thing that I know from my research that's incontrovertibly true is that stress has a real impact on the brain and on the body and when you are feeling that you're threatened we've all experienced some of this but the kids that we're talking about have experienced some things that none of us have experienced when they have stress the experience of feeling threatened beyond what they can do it precipitates physiological changes that encourage them essentially to act fast act impulsively and often not act in their long-term best interests that's actually pretty good if you're being chased by saber-toothed tiger and that's what the stress system has evolved to do is like you know threat kind of fight or flight but can we have an instrument or something that provides feedback to kids but is not tone-deaf to these realities because if a kid is impulsive for example in my research what we have documented to be true is that it very often is downstream of stress that you know their parents are fighting some be in their neighborhood got shot that is making them feel the stress response which is decreasing their ability to control themselves so um if you can do all of that of course is a question not a certainty and I'll just give you a hint of what we're looking at you know I think that one thing we are trying to figure out is whether we can give feedback to kids without it being comparative so without it being like Oh according to the class average you know you are two points below but it's because it's not about other kids really it's about you so who cares about the other kids so one thing we're doing that and the second thing is you know we're thinking that there are some things that kids do like they go on Facebook well they don't go on Facebook that's for old people Instagram they go on snapchat right they go on vine and on all these social media things there are likes and so if you notice none of these social media things have dislikes right so you can post something and you get lights and by the way if you have a kid in your house or you work with one you're like that is an extremely powerful motivator how many likes they get and how fast they get likes so is there a way to give kids feedback in a positive way which is that when they do something good maybe not something bad but something positive that we have built in a way in the school to shine a light on that to give them feedback that everybody really liked it when they you know shared their pencil or that they you know showed up in class and you know asked a question is there a way to do that with all the positive benefits of feedback but none of the negative ones thank you yeah I was unaware of this grading scheme that you've been consulting about but I was thinking especially in light of your work on self-regulation and self-control and goal-setting that it would it seemed that it would be a natural to have the result of the scorecard thinking of the consequences again focus on goals for improvement right that would be discussed and negotiated between the adult and the kid yeah and I'll give you another example so one of the Kipp charter schools in Philadelphia and those of you who know this particle system know it's it's like a loose confederation of schools I mean they're very different from one to the next even though all Kipp schools so the Kipp school it's closest to my university home at Penn is in Philadelphia and the principal there did did the following he had this you know quarterly growth card with feedback from your teachers on you know strengths and needs very specific to like kid behaviors but on the backside he photocopied a goal setting exercise that we had also worked on with him and and essentially it was you know look at the front of the card like flip it over you know write down what your highest strength was like what was something you got a lot of praise about this last marking period okay now flip it back now on what one did your teachers seem to be in agreement that this is something that's a need for you to develop okay and then there was an open-ended thing like given all this like just set one goal for the next quarter right don't try to work on everything just like what's one thing like one of these indicators one behavior that you personally feel like you would like to improve upon and then make a plan and we gave them a little structure for making a plan they're called win then plans when and then you fill in the blank like when it is Thursday then I will you know ask mr. Garrity for math help whatever it is and that he said was the single best thing that came out of this whole exercise was that it was just a way of giving them information that led them to set a goal and make a plan and it wasn't work on everything it was as all good teachers know work on one thing with and and actually maybe that's the only thing we've been thinking about this like maybe they don't need feedback on everything maybe maybe it's just feedback on the one goal that they had right so so we're definitely a work in progress in our lab we're all saying like hash tag work in progress because we all feel like that personally and we feel like that about our work but but that's the direction we're going in because of course science knows that goal setting and planning is enormous ly powerful maybe the most powerful practical self-regulation tool that's ever been discovered is making a plan so we need to connect the dots we need to connect feedback to plan making with kids as long as those goals are realistic and the practical consequences of responding it to them are obvious to the person who sets them right so that's yeah we have a technique for helping kids discover their goals that are less real it's oh so sometimes we start this exercise we call it a wish because goals is like adult language so wish sounds better right so it's like let's make a wish right like what's a 24-hour wear something that you wish would happen in the next 24 hours like what's a lifetime wish write something that you wish would happen to you for your lifetime and oftentimes kids will put things in there like NBA player or you know rap star and of course somebody's got to end up in the NBA and be a rap star but though it's it's all very much a law of small numbers game right and I actually looked up how many NBA players are taken new each year and it's very small so so you kind of the teacher in you wants to be like okay well it's not really really a stick so can we set but that's actually not psychologically smart because if you tell a kid that their wish is not realistic or feasible I mean you're right but it's not going to land on open ears so we do the following it's called a mental contrasting exercise and again it comes from psychological science so like my whole life is going to be like running back and forth across the border between psychological science and Education trading messages right insights from me these two fields so what what researchers have found is that if you contrast the the kind of positive fantasy with the negative reality it's called mental contrasting and because you indulge in this fantasy of like let's elaborate what would it be like if you're in the NBA and they're like oh great I'd like a really big car and I'm like millionaire and you know they're very good at the fantasy of heart and then you say okay great like awesome spend a few minutes then we we ask them open-ended we don't say anything like so um what what are some of the obstacles that stand in the way like why might that not happen like what are the obstacles so then the kids are like well you know I'm not that tall or like you know I you know they name all the obstacles and they themselves can help titrate a little bit the feasibility but it's much more effective than a short cutting the process I mean this takes like a half an hour like oh let's fantasize let's talk about the obstacles and I'll maybe I'll give you my own personal example when I learned this technique the psychologists who develop did at NYU said well you should do it on yourself and I was like all right they're like we'll make a wish I was like my wish is to write more papers I mean I'm a dork souls like my wish is to write more academic papers with Jim Heckman who's this Nobel Prize economist at University of Chicago okay great fantasize now like what would that be like Oh be so awesome Jim Hackman is total genius you know we could bridge economics and psychology so I went went on and on with my like little dorky fantasy and they're like great okay so what are the obstacles that stand in the way and I was like well Jim is like super busy he's literally writing nine books right now at the same time he has like a lab of 45 people in Chicago and I'm not there and so I'm like the last priority and his list he doesn't like to talk on the phone so I am I mean just like impossible to communicate with him I got to like the 19th obstacle and I was like okay this wish is not happening like it's not happening like none of these things are things that are within my control and once sometimes when you do this goal setting exercise what happens is the person changes the wish and that's what happened to me I was like look it's not a viable wish so I'm going to make a different wish right which is that I'm going to try to work with this other person who is actually more available so I think that exercise is illuminating because it tells us what we could do with kids we can listen to them and guide them gently so they can come to their own conclusions about the reality of their situation rather than the way I used to do it as a classroom teacher was just like tell them no and that you know didn't work for me and I don't think it generally works that other person wasn't Daniel Kahneman was it no I have not tried to yeah I think that would have like 25 obstacles for why Danny Kahneman doesn't want to hang out with me although he's very nice he's very yes he is nice he's very busy yeah I had a head of a developmental experience like this with my daughter but it was it was much more expensive and took much longer to develop she aspired to be a professional dancer and she was an excellent dancer she danced at the school for the Pennsylvania Ballet she danced at the school on scholarship at the Joffrey Ballet number of other places and then she tried out for the New York City Ballet and she had this as a vocational goal and she was turned down twice and she came to the conclusion she just wasn't good enough to dance professionally because she couldn't get into the New York City Ballet and so what happened next well what happened is that she went to Penn and she got a degree in philosophy thought she'd go to law school and she ended up working as in the New York City Teaching Fellows program she worked in India that's the same daughter now she's back from Hong Kong after eight years and about ready to have her second child so life goes on but she's done terrifically well as a teacher and an advisor for kids who work with uh teachers who work with kids with special needs so that's our commitment our passion she works with severe kids with severe disabilities and she's doing a wonderful wonderful as a wonderful life and has a great great situation you know and it's so and I'll just say that you know grid is all about sticking with things but you know it's it's not always obvious to us what the you know we can't really see around a corner as my roommates mother used to say you know you can't see around corners and so sometimes kids have this like one view it's like I have to do this and this is the only way that my life can be good but they can't really see around the corner and then there are other options and here's a homework assignment that if you if you if you permit I can give to you today which is that if you think more abstractly about your life like I want to be a ballet dancer or you know I want to be a tenured professor at you know UD in psychology like these are very specific goals but I will give you this one work assignment in one sentence of 10 words or fewer see if you can within the next 24 hours write down your life goal you know one sentence that it's probably going to be pretty abstract that could say like this is what your life is for right and when you get to 10 words or fewer which is very hard which is why I'm going to give you 24 hours to do it it's interesting because there are many things that could maybe get you to that life goal there are many particular actions or pathways my life goal and by the way it took me a few months to actually be able to write it in ten words or fewer is to use psychological science to help children thrive and there are many ways I can do that I can stay in my University as a professor I go to others I might quit academia and just run a non-profit to make this happen so I think actually it'd be interesting if you could ask your daughter you know what would be this kind of top-level goal because this exercise also eventually could lead kids to understand like why they do have you know why do they want to be a rap star like why do they want to you know be a doctor it's usually because it means something even more abstract or a kind of higher level and that also releases them it gives them some flexibility you know it doesn't mean that you have to do it in this way there are multiple ways there are multiple ways to discover what your true passion is I think you know I think your idea has many interesting potential positive implications for designing programs and courses of study and so on and we've talked a little bit about some of these ideas but but you also know your idea has also been criticized as well and one of the criticisms that's appeared in the public press and I think Diane ravaged has actually mentioned this issue as well is that the concept of grit like the concept of resilience places in the minds of some people the onus on the person so whether they succeed or not is really because they possess this attribute trade or quality and and and so like the resilience idea the concern is that maybe we need to be thinking about removing unnecessary barriers so that we grittiness is not the defining or the determining feature in a person's life success what do you think about that I do yeah I think the criticism that when you talk about character or grit the you know the onus seems to be like on the child right like on their shoulders and then if they don't do well it's like okay your fault because you you weren't gritty enough you weren't persevering enough you know I think that's a it's a very I wouldn't say it's a misplaced at all I think it's a really important thing for me personally to listen hard to and it's a conversation that we're having actually right now in my lab I'm on a committee of a sociology student his whole thesis is on how grit can be used for ill purposes unintentionally of course but still I mean it you know it you're responsible for what you put out in the world I think here's what I really think as a psychologist I would say that when you look at a child who is or isn't paying attention is or isn't saying thank you is or isn't generous or isn't honest you know you always have to ask the question as a psychologist like why why are they and you know I don't believe that it's all about genes I think that a lot of human behavior is from accumulated experiences and lessons and when this kid is driving you crazy because they're not doing something you still have to say like but why aren't they doing it and when you say to yourself there are reasons why it's very clear that the onus of responsibility falls not on that own child's you know narrow little shoulders but on everybody's shoulders I mean kids are the product of their lives and their experiences and and we talked about stress as one particularly we talked about role models or the lack of role models or maybe role models we're not modeling things that are good for kids in the long run all of those things matter so in in a hugely important way I think the situation or the environment or the context call what you will it determines in some in many many powerful ways like the competencies that I study and the second thing I was recently in the Baltimore Public Schools not far from here and the then superintendent had written a grant by the time the grant was gotten they weren't there anymore but I showed up for this grant they were trying to increase grit in kids in Baltimore and I said let's you know spend the first year just let me just come to the classes and just like you know hang out in the back and see what's going on and I will say that my experience in those classrooms was that the schools needed many things before they needed Angela Duckworth to come in and lecture anybody about grit I mean they needed curriculum kids were being taught stuff and they needed enough computers to go around so the three kids that I sat next to wouldn't be sitting there for an hour and a half literally given nothing to do at all not even a worksheet they needed or management help right because when a kid is being disruptive the last thing you want to do is send them you know to the back of the class like no that is actually not a good way to they they needed so many things and so the second thing I would say is that in addition to the environment shaping us and and and who we are and if we wake up early in the morning and go for our run and so forth it's not because we're necessarily better people but we learned how to do that and it was modeled for us and encouraged the second way that environment matters is that if a kid is in an environment where there's no incentive to be a passionate persevering person if there's nothing to be passionate or persevering about you know that that of course they're not you know it's like grits not even relevant almost in some context where there's no opportunity and I'll close with this in the book I am i interviewed Todd well I didn't really interview I just took the words of Tana hössi Coates and I was actually I mean many of us are familiar with Tallahassee Coates is a rumen of you know meditations on race in this country but what I had taken was this this little speech he had given about writing because he is a writer first and foremost and it was beautiful like poetry and I just wanted to like write it down in my own book because I was like this is the he talked about how being a writer is you know dealing with your own horribleness on the page and like working at at work and I was like this is exactly what I want to say so I put him in their New York Times does a review of my book and they're like you know Angela Duckworth is you know ignoring poverty and structural disadvantage and they even has Tallahassee coats in her book and I wonder what he would think about being in this book so I emailed him and I was like hey Don aha see like New York Times gonna like saying and like sorry but like you know I did talk to you about this before he wrote me back and this is the gentleman that he is he's like that sounds stressful and I was like yeah kind of stressful when the New York Times thinks you like don't care about poverty or race and he was like but you know I'll tell you like I I tell my kid to work hard I I work hard I want my kid to work hard I'm not telling my kid that like you know that that it's anybody else's job to work hard and do do well but obviously I care a lot about the system in which my kid is growing up and I was like well that's the subtlety that I think has to be expressed and then I'll say this at to end it I you know and then he was like you want me to call you and I was like oh my god do I want Tana hussy coats to call me yes I do I called me on a weekend and we just had a conversation where we we talked about like you know that both he and I I think feel like when you write a book and you try to say something in the world you know it can sometimes not be interpreted exactly the way you wanted and the mature thing to do is to take responsibility for that but also to you know to just keep trying to say more clearly what you do think and so that's what I took from that call and the other thing I took from that call is that he's an extremely decent person who didn't really need to call you know a relative stranger and and to share some of that so I do care about these issues I don't face them you know I like I I think there's a limit to my empathy because I have not been you know a marginalized person in our society but they're really really real and a psychologist who's worth her weight will say that ultimately eventually we all become sociologists because you know if you want to understand a one person you always have to understand the culture in the society I think also it's not fair to criticize you for arguing for the importance of these character traits and creating environments that support their development because that is important ultimately for all people but also we have a responsibility to remove unnecessary obstacles to people's development so these are not incompatible propositions from my perspective how do you feel about that you know nuance is really hard to communicate right it's just really hard so I can say look I I think that delayed gratification and competencies like gratitude and grit are are important individual competencies at the same time both and right like situations matter like that's where they come from you know like why does my kid know how to say thank you I taught her how to say thank you and she grew up in a safe environment where like saying thank you was praised and rewarded and that to do so it's not either/or it's absolutely both in but both and is very hard to communicate I think it doesn't really go viral you know like like either-or goes viral I mean look at our election right like I just you know there's just so it's very hard to have subtlety and nuance and real conversation and so I mean that's why I was so excited to come today I was like oh like let's have a conversation and ask me you know ask me those hard questions because like it's in answering the hard questions that you can maybe get a little more too nuanced but yeah I think I also took for grinnin anybody who's a parent or a teacher it knows that the situation and the environment the context matters enormous ly so I guess I wasn't prepared in a way for that because I was like duh of course it does right I mean if if you walk to school in the morning and because of the color of your skin people cross the street like duh of course that's going to change the way you see everything but I didn't realize that that wouldn't be just assumption that that you know some people would not take that as a as a given well maybe you can think in the future about a book that discusses some of these issues because I'm not going to write another book you should read enough you write a book you write the book I think you did very well and you know how to promote it obviously so but related to technical considerations we had mentioned before that you not only had been criticized this from a policy perspective but there have been some meta analyses done of the grit construct and your measurement of it and some concerns raised about how well it predicts these later outcomes relative to other measures that are well established in the literature like conscientiousness and some of these other dimensions so as a result I think some people are concerned that there may be people wholesale and uncritically adopting the grit concept in promoting instructional interventions that may not be efficacious and I think some of the the literature documents that some of the intervention have not been especially efficacious so what do you what are your thoughts about this issue I think these are two related and you know I don't want to bore you but I'll just tell you like the academic critique the first one is that you know maybe grits the same thing as conscientiousness right maybe it's kind of you know old wine in new bottles and you have this like sexy one syllable word but really it's kind of what we've been studying for a long time I study conscientiousness too actually so I'm well-acquainted with it and here's the little personality psychology in 60-seconds in since world war two psychologists have tried to map all of human personality and there are five major domains conscientiousness agreeableness neuroticism otherwise known as emotional stability but anyway neuroticism ocean elapsed and downs openness to experience that's kind of like an intellectual domain of personality and then finally extraversion right so he's like five really big domains are actually literally called the big five and conscientiousness the first one is highly correlated with grit so people who are passionate and persevering over the very long term tend also to be self-controlled and dependable punctual orderly people which is all the things that are in conscientiousness the thing is is that I think and based on my own data that they're not exactly the same that you can have like punctual dependable people who are not passionate about what they do and not extremely resilient in the face of adversity again related but not exactly identical we could you know I guess go back and forth in academic journal articles about like okay we know who's more right but that is the criticism and I would say also from my own data and since we're talking about kids when it comes to GPA you know their report card grades at the end of the year there are other things than grit that are even more predictive including conscientiousness and delay of gratification and self-control when it comes to gee I've even published that result two years ago which is like I said in my own paper there are other things that are more predictive of GPA and also things like whether you you know stick to a healthy diet and the reason is this is that being passionate and persevering about a singular life-giving goal is um is not usually expressed through getting a great GPA or sticking to your diet right usually people are passionate about something I mean some people are passionate about that but for many other people it's saving lives or you know social equality or whatever it is that's not exactly getting a good GPA so I think there are differences between grit and other aspects of conscientiousness but academics that's what we do we disagree and I think that's it's fine to disagree and and you know maybe we're both a little wrong and maybe we'll learn something the second thing that you said was that maybe some interventions aren't effective at improving grit I Angela Duckworth do not have a recipe for increasing grit and kids so I would not at all be surprised that there are many failed efforts to increase grit it's not easy to change behavior and so though I believe that we should invest in this and we should care about it this is not gonna you know this is what education always does it's like oh here's the one two three push this button this button in the middle you know standardized tests and accountability and then everything will be fixed it's like hmm maybe it's a little harder than that I feel like that about grit grit is not the only thing kids need I don't know exactly how we should cultivate it kids are complicated and so we're gonna need more patience I think to develop things that work better than we have today and also um you know I would hope in that kind of nuanced enlightened way of thinking about kids it's not just about grit and I tried to write that in my book but maybe I should have written it better I said in the last chapter that my own two girls are growing up before my eyes and I don't wake up every day thinking like well I hope you're gritty and nothing else right I mean of course I want my kids to first and foremost be honest and nice people and by the way being an honest nice person is not the same thing as being gritty and if I had to pick of course I would pick honesty and niceness over grit I happen to think that they could do all of these things you know so that's my view but um you know there's so much complexity and I hate the maybe this is why I don't read the newspaper I'm not interested in politics and policy because I must feel like there's an oversimplification you know like kids are complicated and the world they live in are complicated and poverty does matter race and race relations in my view hugely matter so it is modeling so it is grit so it is empathy so it is emotional intelligence so it's critical reading so does having a better math curriculum it's all of those things so it's never either/or or like this is the simple panacea it's a lot messier than that but I think that as a country we need to have more patience and more you know tolerance for complexity because otherwise we'll just lurch from one simplistic solution to another and they'll never work I think this is what happens when people bring their own particular model for seeing the world they have limited perspective and they believe whatever the implications of that perspective are will solve the problem but these problems are very very complicated problems I think we have time for one more question before dr. Duckworth goes over to give her lecture any other questions for much of my life I've been called stubborn including by my best friend sitting next to me and sometimes even hard-headed both of which have kind of negative connotations I'm thinking after reading your book that perhaps my whole life I've simply been gritty do you make any distinction among terms like stubborn and gritty or his stubbornness just gritty gone to the evil side this is such a such an articulate question you know when I first met a new professor in my department he was like one of those like super famous like he got recruited in everybody was like who Phil tetlock is coming to our department he's really really great and the first conversation we had he said do you know what a Peabody plot is I was like no I don't know and who's like basically you can take any characteristic like grit or courage or and then you can look at the mirror image of it which is basically the same character strength or positive thing but has negative connotations right so grit and stubbornness right so so I said to him like oh well you know I don't know much about it send me the paper I read the paper and I'll say this after like reading up on this and so forth you know I think that the definition might be the same but you're right the connotation is different so you know if if you if you really think about it I think most most things like grit do have a possibility of being bad right there's like there's a way in which you could be gritty that it would not be good for you right if you were for example gritty about the wrong goals right like Hitler right very gritty not good goals right but very passionate and very persevering but like very very bad or if you could be gritty about the wrong level goal and maybe we'll end on this you know I think that um if you have a kid who's really gritty about a low level like it's a goal that is not feasible or it's like you know maybe not in their best interest you know you don't want them to be be gritty about that and that's why I gave you that homework assignment because I think if you really reflect first of all I think most human beings I mean Hitler being the exception but most children that I've worked with you know they really do have noble goals like they really if they really reflect about what they want their brief time on this planet to be for they often will think of things that are about other people and and that is what I want them to be gritty about and I think sometimes when we use words like stubborn or hard-headed we mean that really the person is tenacious at the wrong level but my guess is that you have very noble goals and that you are probably gritty at the top level so with that terrific way to end I also want to thank you because these are the questions that make me smarter about my work and you've given me a lot to think about on my on my train ride home and beyond so thank you so much

Channel: University of Delaware College of Education and Human Development

Views: 14,538

Rating: 4.768116 out of 5

Keywords: education, teacher education, teacher preparation, Angela Duckworth, Duckworth, University of Delaware, Grit, UD, CEHD, SOE, College of Education and Human Development, School of Education

Id: 4QoS-kY4EDo

Length: 56min 53sec (3413 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 09 2016