Grit and Growth Mind-Set as Predictors of College Students' Utility Value, Self-Efficacy, and Achievement Goals

• In Event: What Is True About Grit: Relations With Self-Regulation and Motivation and New Innovative Interventions

Abstract

Objectives

We pursued three related goals regarding college students’ grit, growth mindset (the belief that one’s intelligence can grow), and achievement motivation. One goal was to examine the factor structure of college students’ grit and growth mindset. A second goal was to evaluate whether grit and growth mindset changed during a semester in which students completed a course intended to improve their self-regulated learning. A third goal was to investigate whether grit, growth mindset, or changes in these constructs were associated with students’ value, self-efficacy, and achievement goals.

Theoretical Framework/Perspective

Theorists adopting a social cognitive perspective on self-regulated learning (SRL) view motivation as essential to fueling students’ engagement in the strategic and effortful regulatory processes emblematic of SRL (Pintrich & Zusho, 2007; Zimmerman & Schunk, 2008). In this framework, motivation is derived from various beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions that vary across contexts or instructional conditions. Broader and more stable personal characteristics such as grit (Duckworth & Quinn, 2009) and growth mindset (Yeager & Dweck, 2012) are also viewed as influences on students’ motivation (Bidjerano & Dai, 2007; Komarraju, Karau, & Schmeck, 2009; Wolters & Hussain, 2014). Researchers have not systematically examined the relations of these variables in college students. Further, understanding these relations is complicated by unresolved questions about how best to conceptualize these personal qualities and their actual stability in college populations.

Method & Data Sources

Students (N=380) at a large public university taking a credit-bearing course designed to improve their motivation, use of strategies, and other aspects of self-regulated learning participated. Students completed self-report surveys of grit (Duckworth & Quinn, 2009) and growth mindset (Dweck, 2006) in week 2 and week 13 of the semester. Measures of achievement goals (Elliot & Murayama, 2008), self-efficacy (Pintrich, Smith, Garcia, & McKeachie, 1993), and value (Hulleman, Durik, Schweigert, & Harackiewicz, 2008) were completed in week 5. Students’ performance on individual assignments, tests, and their overall course grade were also collected.

Results

Confirmatory analyses indicated that grit was best conceived as two positively correlated factors that included consistency of interest and perseverance of effort, X2 (19, N= 380) = 47.88, p< .001 (CFI= .947, TLI= .922, RMSEA= .064, SRMR= .041). The growth mindset items formed separate growth and entity belief factors, X2 (19, N= 380) = 50.98, p< .001 (CFI= .987, TLI= .981, RMSEA= .067, SRMR= .023) that were negatively correlated. We found no differences in grit and growth mindset that students reported earlier versus later in the semester. Regressions and structural equation modeling will be used to evaluate how grit and growth mindset relate to one another and to students’ value, self-efficacy and achievement goals.

Scholarly Significance

Grit, growth mindset and motivation represent potentially important influences on college students’ academic performance. Each has also been proposed as a potential target for instructional interventions designed to improve students’ learning and achievement. This study builds on the understanding of these critical constructs and extends what we know about how they are related to one another.

Authors

• Christopher A. Wolters, The Ohio State University

• Sungjun Won, The Ohio State University

• Lauren C. Hensley, The Ohio State University

• Anna Brady, The Ohio State University