Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance | Angela Lee Duckworth | TED
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1.IQ Not Sole Predictor of Success
0:00 / 2:28The speaker, a former teacher, observed that IQ was not the only factor determining student success. She noticed that some of her strongest performers did not have high IQ scores, while some smart students struggled. This led her to question what truly drives success in education and life.
- IQ
- Student Performance
- Motivation
- Psychological Perspective
What's inside this course
- 0:00
1. IQ Not Sole Predictor of Success
The speaker, a former teacher, observed that IQ was not the only factor determining student success. She noticed that some of her strongest performers did not have high IQ scores, while some smart students struggled. This led her to question what truly drives success in education and life.
- 2:28
2. Identifying Predictors of Success
The speaker left teaching to become a psychologist, studying success in various challenging environments like West Point, the National Spelling Bee, and among rookie teachers and salespeople. Her goal was to identify the characteristics that predict who succeeds and why, beyond traditional measures like IQ.
- 5:00
3. Grit: Passion and Perseverance
Across all her studies, one characteristic consistently emerged as a significant predictor of success: grit. Grit is defined as passion and perseverance for very long-term goals, emphasizing stamina and sustained effort over years. This was further evidenced in a study with Chicago public school students, where grittier kids were more likely to graduate.
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Full transcript of “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance | Angela Lee Duckworth | TED”
— 117 segments
0:00Transcriber: Joseph Geni
Reviewer: Morton Bast
0:13When I was 27 years old,
0:15I left a very demanding job
in management consulting
0:18for a job that was even more
demanding: teaching.
0:23I went to teach seventh graders math
0:26in the New York City public schools.
0:28And like any teacher,
I made quizzes and tests.
0:31I gave out homework assignments.
0:33When the work came back,
I calculated grades.
0:37What struck me was that IQ
was not the only difference
0:41between my best and my worst students.
0:45Some of my strongest performers
did not have stratospheric IQ scores.
0:50Some of my smartest kids
weren't doing so well.
0:54And that got me thinking.
0:56The kinds of things you need
to learn in seventh grade math,
0:59sure, they're hard: ratios, decimals,
the area of a parallelogram.
1:05But these concepts are not impossible,
1:07and I was firmly convinced
that every one of my students
1:11could learn the material
1:14if they worked hard and long enough.
1:17After several more years of teaching,
1:19I came to the conclusion
that what we need in education
1:23is a much better understanding
of students and learning
1:27from a motivational perspective,
1:29from a psychological perspective.
1:32In education, the one thing
we know how to measure best is IQ.
1:38But what if doing
well in school and in life
1:42depends on much more
1:44than your ability to learn
quickly and easily?
1:48So I left the classroom,
1:50and I went to graduate school
to become a psychologist.
1:54I started studying kids and adults
1:56in all kinds of super
challenging settings,
1:59and in every study my question was,
2:01who is successful here and why?
2:04My research team and I went
to West Point Military Academy.
2:08We tried to predict which cadets
2:10would stay in military training
and which would drop out.
2:14We went to the National Spelling Bee
2:17and tried to predict which children
would advance farthest in competition.
2:22We studied rookie teachers
working in really tough neighborhoods,
2:26asking which teachers are still
going to be here in teaching
2:29by the end of the school year,
2:31and of those, who will be
the most effective
2:34at improving learning
outcomes for their students?
2:38We partnered with private
companies, asking,
2:40which of these salespeople
is going to keep their jobs?
2:43And who's going to earn the most money?
2:45In all those very different contexts,
2:47one characteristic emerged
as a significant predictor of success.
2:52And it wasn't social intelligence.
2:55It wasn't good looks, physical health,
2:58and it wasn't IQ.
3:00It was grit.
3:02Grit is passion and perseverance
for very long-term goals.
3:07Grit is having stamina.
3:09Grit is sticking with your future,
day in, day out,
3:13not just for the week,
not just for the month,
3:17but for years,
3:18and working really hard
to make that future a reality.
3:23Grit is living life
like it's a marathon, not a sprint.
3:28A few years ago,
3:30I started studying grit
in the Chicago public schools.
3:33I asked thousands of high school juniors
3:35to take grit questionnaires,
3:37and then waited around more than a year
3:39to see who would graduate.
3:42Turns out that grittier kids
3:44were significantly more
likely to graduate,
3:47even when I matched them
on every characteristic I could measure,
3:51things like family income,
3:53standardized achievement test scores,
3:56even how safe kids felt
when they were at school.
3:59So it's not just at West Point
or the National Spelling Bee
4:02that grit matters.
4:03It's also in school,
4:05especially for kids
at risk for dropping out.
4:09To me, the most shocking thing about grit
4:12is how little we know,
4:14how little science knows,
about building it.
4:17Every day, parents and teachers ask me,
4:19"How do I build grit in kids?
4:21What do I do to teach kids
a solid work ethic?
4:25How do I keep them motivated
for the long run?"
4:28The honest answer is,
4:30I don't know.
4:31(Laughter)
4:32What I do know is that talent
doesn't make you gritty.
4:36Our data show very clearly
4:38that there are many talented individuals
4:40who simply do not follow through
on their commitments.
4:44In fact, in our data,
grit is usually unrelated
4:48or even inversely related
to measures of talent.
4:52So far, the best idea I've heard
about building grit in kids
4:57is something called "growth mindset."
4:59This is an idea developed
at Stanford University by Carol Dweck,
5:03and it is the belief that the ability
to learn is not fixed,
5:08that it can change with your effort.
5:11Dr. Dweck has shown
5:13that when kids read
and learn about the brain
5:16and how it changes and grows
in response to challenge,
5:19they're much more likely
to persevere when they fail,
5:23because they don't believe that failure
is a permanent condition.
5:29So growth mindset
is a great idea for building grit.
5:33But we need more.
5:35And that's where I'm going
to end my remarks,
5:37because that's where we are.
5:38That's the work that stands before us.
5:40We need to take our best ideas,
our strongest intuitions,
5:44and we need to test them.
5:46We need to measure
whether we've been successful,
5:49and we have to be willing
to fail, to be wrong,
5:53to start over again with lessons learned.
5:56In other words, we need to be gritty
5:59about getting our kids grittier.
6:02Thank you.
6:03(Applause)