In preparation for a conference next month, I’ve been reading a lot about the relationship between grit and student success. This is the topic of Paul Tough’s Why Children Succeed, but while his subjects are middle school students, mine are adult learners at community colleges, specifically “special populations” of students. In public education, special populations are defined by the federal Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Improvement Act of 2006 as
- Individuals with disabilities
- Individuals from economically disadvantaged families, including foster children
- Individuals preparing for nontraditional training and employment
- Single parents, including single pregnant women
- Displaced homemakers
- Individuals with other barriers to educational achievement, including individuals with limited English proficiency
Race, ethnicity, orientation or national origin isn’t mentioned in this definition, but it’s clear that it includes all of the demographics necessary to increase diversity in higher education and the workforce. These groups of students and job seekers have historically encountered barriers to a decent education and livelihood, yet many are successful in spite of the challenges that life, circumstances, culture, and limited exposure present them. Why do THEY succeed?
I believe the differentiators are the same grit, curiosity and character that Paul Tough documents in his study of K-8 students. Such attributes begin developing at this age, but like emotional intelligence, they continue to develop throughout life. In fact, I would argue that these three attributes themselves are actually EI competencies. Daniel Goleman, psychologist and EI expert, believes that persistence and the ability to let go of stressful situations strengthens focus and attention and increases the ability to manage emotion – an observation Tough makes about exceptional middle-schoolers such the championship chess players from Brooklyn housing projects.
I know from my own experience that much of what I learned as the oldest of four children being raised by a single father on a graveyard-shift janitor’s salary is what developed character and curiosity that enabled me to persevere in high tech environments. I never thought of it as grit since it was my normal. The one advantage I did have was a father whose desire for our exposure were simply life and more education than he completed. But sometimes life is the better teacher.
Jay Banfield, Founding Executive Director of Year Up Bay Area, believes that life skills are espoused as ideal talent but are seldom the ticket to enter into consideration for opportunity:
If you think about your best employees, aren’t they the ones who work the hardest and who persevere through difficult times? Their technical skills are important, but don’t those technical skills quickly become a threshold issue, a minimum requirement? Ask any hiring manager what they are looking for in an ideal candidate, and you will quickly hear words like grit, determination, motivation, persistence, adaptability and hard work, characteristics often described as “non-cognitive” skills by academics like the Nobel Prize winner James Heckman. Ask those same hiring managers how they source and identify such characteristics and you get…nothing.
Why nothing? My assumption is that you can’t identify it if you don’t know what those characteristics look like from perspectives other than your own. Employers have neither the time nor willingness to develop non-cognitive skills; they have no quantifiable performance metric. Industry advisories have been telling education that “it’s in your court” for years. A successful educational experience is a pre-requisite to a successful career. Banfield’s article challenges “Do we have the grit to close the skills gap?” I’m wondering if educators have the grit to look for and coach those skills? In my explorations thus far, I’m finding that the relationship between grit and student success is not only about the student’s grit.
I’m still working on my session presentation at the Joint Special Populations Advisory Council Conference next month, but I’ve got the feeling it will be a lively discussion! More to come …
