Tag Archives: Angela Duckworth

Getting Grit through Mentoring

Three weeks on, this article about the power of failure is still among the top most-emailed articles from the New York Times Magazine’s web site. It’s an engaging piece of writing about an emerging focus on character education and the challenges that it presents for educators of kids from fortunate and less-fortunate backgrounds.

One of the highlights of the essay is a brief discussion of Prof. Angela Duckworth’s work at the University of Pennsylvania on the concept of “Grit.” Prof. Duckworth defines Grit as the ability to remain committed to achieving a goal even in the face… Continue reading

Motivation a better predictor of professional success than I.Q.

According to University of Pennsylvania Professor Angela Lee Duckworth, her recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that, “IQ score predicted life outcomes, including academic performance in adolescence and criminal convictions, employment, and years of education in early adulthood. (But) After adjusting for the influence of test motivation, however, the predictive validity of intelligence for life outcomes was significantly diminished, particularly for nonacademic outcomes.”