Grit

“authoritative parenting”: Wendy S. Grolnick and Richard M. Ryan, “Parent Styles Associated with Children’s Self-Regulation and Competence in School,” Journal of Educational Psychology 81 (1989): 143–54. Earl S. Schaefer, “A Configurational Analysis of Children’s Reports of Parent Behavior,” Journal of Consulting Psychology 29 (1965): 552–57. Diana Baumrind, “Authoritative Parenting Revisited: History and Current Status,” in Authoritative Parenting: Synthesizing Nurturance and Discipline for Optimal Child Development, ed. Robert E. Larzelere, Amanda Sheffield Morris, and Amanda W. Harrist (Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2013), 11–34.

a moratorium on further research: Laurence Steinberg, “Presidential Address: We Know Some Things: Parent-Adolescent Relationships in Retrospect and Prospect,” Journal of Research on Adolescence 11 (2001): 1–19.

warm, respectful, and demanding parents: Laurence Steinberg, Nina S. Mounts, Susie D. Lamborn, and Sanford M. Dornbusch, “Authoritative Parenting and Adolescent Adjustment Across Varied Ecological Niches,” Journal of Research on Adolescence 1 (1991): 19–36.

across a decade or more: Koen Luyckx et al., “Parenting and Trajectories of Children’s Maladaptive Behaviors: A 12-year Prospective Community Study,” Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology 40 (2011): 468–78.

messages their children receive: Earl S. Schaefer, “Children’s Reports of Parental Behavior: An Inventory,” Child Development 36 (1965): 413–24. Nancy Darling and Laurence Steinberg, “Parenting Style as Context: An Integrative Model,” Psychological Bulletin 113 (1993): 487–96.

parenting assessment: Adapted with permission from Nancy Darling and Teru Toyokawa, “Construction and Validation of the Parenting Style Inventory II (PSI-II),” (unpublished manuscript, 1997).

as virtual “carbon copies”: Albert Bandura, Dorothea Ross, and Sheila Ross, “Imitation of Film-Mediated Aggressive Models,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 66 (1963): 3–11.

“work toward distant goals”: Bloom, Developing Talent, 510.

“parents’ own interests”: Ronald S. Brandt, “On Talent Development: A Conversation with Benjamin Bloom,” Educational Leadership 43 (1985): 34.

the next generation: Center for Promise, Don’t Quit on Me: What Young People Who Left School Say About the Power of Relationships (Washington, D.C.: America’s Promise Alliance, 2015), www.gradnation.org/report/dont-quit-me.

“fifty-something, grizzled rocker”: Tobi Lütke, “The Apprentice Programmer,” Tobi Lütke’s blog, March 3, 2013, http://tobi.lutke.com/blogs/news/11280301-the-apprentice-programmer.

emerging research on teaching: Kathryn R. Wentzel, “Are Effective Teachers Like Good Parents? Teaching Styles and Student Adjustment in Early Adolescence,” Child Development 73 (2002): 287–301. Douglas A. Bernstein, “Parenting and Teaching: What’s the Connection in Our Classrooms?” Psychology Teacher Network, September 2013, http://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/ptn/2013/09/parenting-teaching.aspx.

1,892 different classrooms: Ronald F. Ferguson and Charlotte Danielson, “How Framework for Teaching and Tripod 7Cs Evidence Distinguish Key Components of Effective Teaching,” in Designing Teacher Evaluation Systems: New Guidance from the Measures of Effective Teaching Project, ed. Thomas J. Kane, Kerri A. Kerr, and Robert C. Pianta (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2014), 98–133.

David Yeager and Geoff Cohen: David Scott Yeager et al., “Breaking the Cycle of Mistrust: Wise Interventions to Provide Critical Feedback Across the Racial Divide,” Journal of Experimental Psychology 143 (2013): 804–24. For the research on highly effective tutors that originally inspired this intervention, see Mark R. Lepper and Maria Woolverton, “The Wisdom of Practice: Lessons Learned from the Study of Highly Effective Tutors,” in Improving Academic Achievement: Impact of Psychological Factors on Education, ed. Joshua Aronson (New York: Academic Press, 2002), 135–58.

“have very high expectations”: Yeager et al., “Breaking the Cycle”

Cody Coleman: Cody Coleman, PhD candidate in computer science at Stanford University, in conversation with the author, May 24, 2013.

Chantel Smith: Chantel Smith, mathematics teacher at Winslow Township High School, in conversation with the author, March 15, 2015.

“Stay positive”: Cody Coleman, interview by Stephanie Renée, 900AM-WURD, October 31, 2014.

CHAPTER 11: THE PLAYING FIELDS OF GRIT

both challenged and having fun: Reed W. Larson and Douglas Kleiber, “Daily Experience of Adolescents,” in Handbook of Clinical Research and Practice with Adolescents, ed. Patrick H. Tolan and Bertram J. Cohler (Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 1993), 125–45. Reed W. Larson, “Positive Development in a Disorderly World,” Journal of Research on Adolescence 21 (2011): 317–34. Data are originally from Reed W. Larson, Giovanni Moneta, Maryse H. Richards, and Suzanne Wilson, “Continuity, Stability, and Change in Daily Emotional Experience Across Adolescence,” Child Development 73 (2002): 1151–65.



Adapted with permission from Young et al. poster





See also David J. Shernoff, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Barbara Schneider, and Elisa Steele Shernoff, “Student Engagement in High School Classrooms from the Perspective of Flow Theory,” School Psychology Quarterly 18 (2003): 158–76. David J. Shernoff and Deborah Lowe Vandell, “Engagement in After-School Program Activities: Quality of Experience from the Perspective of Participants,” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 36 (2007): 891–903. Kiyoshi Asakawa and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “The Quality of Experience of Asian American Adolescents in Academic Activities: An Exploration of Educational Achievement,” Journal of Research on Adolescence 8 (1998): 241–62.

involved in extracurriculars: Reed W. Larson, “Toward a Psychology of Positive Youth Development,” American Psychologist 55 (2000): 170–83. See also Robert D. Putnam, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 174–82.

predicts better outcomes: For example, see Jennifer Fredricks and Jacquelynne S. Eccles, “Extracurricular Participation Associated with Beneficial Outcomes? Concurrent and Longitudinal Relations,” Developmental Psychology 42 (2006): 698–713.

playing video games: Bureau of Labor Statistics, “American Time Use Survey,” Average Hours Spent Per Day in Leisure and Sports Activities, by Youngest and Oldest Populations Graph, 2013, http://www.bls.gov/TUS/CHARTS/LEISURE.HTM. See also Vanessa R. Wight, Joseph Price, Suzanne M. Bianchi, and Bijou R. Hunt, “The Time Use of Teenagers,” Social Science Research 38 (2009): 792–809.

success in adulthood: Margo Gardner, Jodie Roth, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, “Adolescents’ Participation in Organized Activities and Developmental Success 2 and 8 Years After High School: Do Sponsorship, Duration, and Intensity Matter?” Developmental Psychology 44 (2008): 814–30.

Willingham was the director: Warren H. Willingham, Success in College: The Role of Personal Qualities and Academic Ability (New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1985). Around the time Warren Willingham was conducting this study, his teenage son Dan went off to college to study psychology. Dan is now a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and, in the spirit of his father’s legacy, dedicated to helping kids benefit from advances in cognitive psychology. My favorite of his books is Why Don’t Students Like School? (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009).

beyond standardized tests: The predictive validity of standardized achievement tests for academic and professional outcomes is well-documented. See the work of psychologists Paul Sackett and Nathan Kuncel in particular. My claim here is not that achievement tests are invalid, per se, but rather that they are an incomplete and imperfect metric for what students know and can do. See Angela L. Duckworth, Patrick D. Quinn, and Eli Tsukayama, “What No Child Left Behind Leaves Behind: The Roles of IQ and Self-Control in Predicting Standardized Achievement Test Scores and Report Card Grades,” Journal of Educational Psychology 104 (2012): 439–51. See also James J. Heckman, John Eric Humphries, and Tim Kautz, ed., The Myth of Achievement Tests: The GED and the Role of Character in American Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).

“purposeful, continuous commitment”: Willingham, Success in College, 213.

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