A Genealogy of Grit: Researching Noncognitive Dispositions

• In Event: Roundtable Session 16
  In Roundtable Session: Noncognitive Dispositions: A Philosophical Analysis

Abstract

In this paper I explore what grit, an increasingly popular non-cognitive disposition, is as a way of being and under what conditions this way of being arose in American cultural consciousness as a positive or desirable attribute. I aim to, as Foucault directs, examine the constitution of grit though a period in American history so as to understand better the institutions and techniques that have led to the modern concept of the gritty individual. I seek to give a genealogy of grit to provide a normative framework for the current interest in its cultivation and measurement in education.

Author

• Ariana Gonzalez Stokas