GRIT Flashcards
What are non-cognitive skills?
referred to as soft skills such as communication skills, grit ( so basically referred to someones personality which can be learned but there is some genetic determination.
What is grit?
Grit = perseverance, work ethic. STICK TO IT.
How do we see grit in education?
Gritty people believe in the malleability of ability, hence they believe with hard work you can improve ability and become a high achiever.
What is the paper for this topic?
Ever failed, try again, succeed better: results from a randomized educational intervention on grit. Alan.S et al (2019).
What is the main aim or result of the paper?
show that grit, a non-cognitive skill that has been shown to be highly predictive of achievement, is malleable in the childhood period and can be fostered in the classroom environment.
What is the main outline of the experiment?
1) It is a field experiment where there is a random intervention in elementary state schools low economic sociological background) in Istanbul (>3200 students in 110 classrooms).
2) Give students a course on how the brain works and how the brain changes with practice ( brainology). This course is meant to enhance grit.
3) Students choose between a high reward challenging task ( hard puzzle) or a low reward easy task( easy puzzle).
4) They want to see which puzzle they choose and how do they react when they fail ( so they have a number of rounds, so if they have at first a hard puzzle but fail do they try the easy puzzle or preserve with hard puzzle).
5) They also measure students believe on the malleability of ability. ( can you work hard and improve ability or your just born not to do maths e.g.).
What are the main results?
1) Compared to the control group, grit treated students are more likely to go for the high reward test.
2) Treated more likely to succeed in the hard task ( as they have to practice again) and more likely to try again if they have failed.
3) Treated perform significantly better in maths test.
We will now actually look at the intervention in the schools.
It was an extracurricular course that ran over 2 hours a week, with videos, classroom activties that highlight:
1) Plasticity of the brain against the notion of innate ability.
2) Role of effort in enhancing skills and achieving goals
3) Importance of constructive interpretation of setbacks and failures.
4) Importance of goal setting
SO all of this is for treatment group. What do the control group get?
The control group get training with same length but not on grit, something else
As we can see with table, the first sample, they get a course on patience and grit and just on patience. You cant really isolate the effect of grit here.
In the second study they just have a course on grit.
So they do baseline data collection, then the training where they do some tasks additionally, then there is a short run data collection, then there is a long run data collection 2 and 5 years, to detect whether there is a difference in how students do in a national maths test.
What type of baseline data did they collect and why collect this?
Attitudes, extra, which is important to check robustness of results.
Lets look at the actual experiment visits to the schools which measured grit
First visit = task = find 3 pairs of numbers in a matrix that add up to 100 in 1.5 mins, 5 rounds.
One of the rounds are picked at random and reward based on that round.
Now what you can win depends on what you pick so
if you pick the difficult game, you get 4 gifts and nothing if you fail
If you pick easy game, you get 1 gift and 0 for failure.
So before each of the 5 rounds they have to choose difficult or hard game/puzzle.
You are told if you succeeded or failed after each round. so they take it into account whether they choose easy or hard puzzle.
So you get to play whatever you choose but in the first round there is a 50% chance you get to play what you chose but a 50% chance you play difficult game, WHY?
To avoid selection effects, you want a sample to do difficult rounds without choosing it.
Now lets look at the second visit, the students have to pick at the end of the first visit whether they want to choose the easy or hard game, before they make a choice, they are also told they will get a practice book, this means if your so inclinced you can practice for a week and make sure you are going to do better next week.
Again there is a 50% they get their choice and 50% have to play hard game.
They are told which game they will play in second visit at the end of first round.
What is the aim of the practice booklet?
We want to see those on grit course take the opportunity to practice.
So with the first and second visit what do we want to find out?
Controlling for baseline data, what is the effect of the grit treatment on success on task( finding 3 or more correct pairs that add to 100, do you do better with grit course),
Also the effect of grit treatment on whether you choose the hard of easy game.
What is the point of table II? Do we want the values in columns (3) and (6) to be significantly different from 0.
They look at this so that they know the control group and treatment group are similar as possible for robustness in results. Difference in P values of mean are by in large not significant and close to 0, with one or two expectations like raven in sample in 2, its significant. BUT is that an issue that the treatment have significantly lower raven( iq score) than control? No as they are taken before the treatment it gives extra evidence that the treatment worked when the treatment group actually do better.
This shows the first set of results for the first visit, in which there are 5 rounds, each round they choose difficult and easy.
The dependent variable is whether they chose difficult in that round, what can we see?
In column 6 the dependent variable is if they chose difficult in all 5 rounds.
What is the dependent variable in column 7 and what can we infer ?
Treatment is significant everywhere. students in the grit treatment were significantly more likely to choose the difficult puzzle, same is true for the 2nd sample.
In column 6 we get a significant treatment effect, that they did choose difficult in each of the 5 rounds.
The dependent variable in column 7 is the subjects who were forced to do the difficult game in round 1 and failed, to get the clean effect of reaction to failure. So as we can see the grit treatment is significant for predicting whether they will pick difficult game in second round.
We also said we did the experiment to measure success on task( 3 pairs of numbers that add up to 100) , so by using this table, interpret results ( key hint, this is after visit 1) ?
As you can see there is no difference between the grit treated group and the control group why? As its because its after visit 1, so grit treated group haven’t practiced, as they didn’t know about the task before the first visit.
Now for the second week once they have had 1 week practice if they want to, lets look at the success and payoffs of the 2 groups? Interpret the results.
LAST COLUMN INTERPRET IT ( HARD)
Column 1 is where the difficult game was imposed and we see a significant effect of the treatment.
When we look at the payoffs, we get significant treatment effects everywhere.
Last 2 columns is whether the kids made the right choice ( need to know individual success probabilities based on baseline data, but ignores cost of effort). We see that there is mostly a significant effect on treatment picking the payoff maximising choice.
Now we want to see if there is an effect on school grades? lets look at school grades given by teachers, as you can see interestingly there is no effect. ( coefficients are low and negative) why?
There is no difference between the kids that got the grit course and school grades because if teachers grade on curve you wouldn’t see an effect because remember it isn’t individual kids put in treatment its the whole school , so if the whole school is in grit treatment, even if whole school do better, if you grade on curve, you wont observe difference in grade.
If we look at standardised national scores we see a difference in comparison to teach grades, interpret the table? ( Not this is 2.5 years later after they did this intervention.
We see a significant effect on maths scores ( not literature)
What does this show?
This is just visual clarity, we see significant effects of treatment in many things.
What does this show
This is a density function of their beliefs about the malleability of ability which has changed and we see the control group is distrubtion is to the left of grit treated students.( treatment group disturbtion shifted to the right) Its not an increase in confidence be careful because you can not be confident and still be optimistic about your performance.
