EdSight

Angela Duckworth has devoted her professional life to enabling and providing pupils with the tools they need to realize their own potential. After working for a while as a K–12 teacher, Duckworth started her career in management consulting. Later, she turned her attention to psychology, utilizing the scientific method to connect theory and practice in the disciplines of psychology and education. Her scholarly contributions to these two domains have been significant. Her groundbreaking work on the concept of grit and her exploration of self-control, mindset, motivation, and character have allowed her to shatter illusions surrounding talent, giftedness, and natural ability while also expanding our understanding of effort and achievement.

Angela Duckworth founded Character Lab, a nonprofit organization that translates scientific evidence into actionable advice for anyone who interacts with teens.

Duckworth developed the Grit Scale, a questionnaire that assesses these two factors, in collaboration with Chris Peterson at the University of Michigan. Duckworth describes the United States Military Academy's use of the Grit Scale in a 2007 study. In its initial version, the Grit Scale was a 12-item, 5-point Likert-type survey that assessed perseverance and self-reported consistency of interests and perseverance of effort.

Additionally, Duckworth worked with Teach for America and Wendy Kopp to try and figure out what makes a good teacher.

• Duckworth, A. L., & Seligman, M. E. (2005). Self-discipline outdoes IQ in predicting academic performance of adolescents. Psychological science, 16(12), 939-944.
• Duckworth, A. L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M. D., & Kelly, D. R. (2007). Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(6), 1087–1101.
• Duckworth, A. L., Quinn, P. D., & Seligman, M. E. (2009). Positive predictors of teacher effectiveness. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 4(6), 540–547.
• Eskreis-Winkler, L., Shulman, E. P., Beal, S. A., & Duckworth, A. L. (2014). The grit effect: Predicting retention in the military, the workplace, school and marriage. Frontiers in Psychology, 5(36), 1–12.
• Eskreis-Winkler, L., Shulman, E. P., & Duckworth, A. L. (2014b). Survivor mission: Do those who survive have a drive to thrive at work? Journal of Positive Psychology, 9(3), 209–218.
• Robertson-Kraft, C., & Duckworth, A. L. (2014). True grit: Trait-level perseverance and passion for long-term goals predicts effectiveness and retention among novice teachers. Teachers College Record, 116(3), 1–27.

When long-term goals clash with short-term, more satisfying ones, self-control is the self-initiated regulation of ideas, feelings, and behaviors, according to her definition. Duckworth conducted a longitudinal study using a nationwide data collection of 4-year-old children who were given delay of gratification activities. She tracked them into their late teens in an attempt to determine whether skill and effort were related. She discovered that self-control had a greater predictive power for report card grades than IQ and that it causally affects academic progress.

• Duckworth, A. L., Tsukayama, E., & Geier, A. B. (2010). Self-controlled children stay leaner in the transition to adolescence. Appetite, 54(2), 304–308.
• Duckworth, A. L., Tsukayama, E., & May, H. (2010b). Establishing causality using longitudinal hierarchical linear modeling: An illustration predicting achievement from self-control. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 1(4), 311–317.
• Duckworth, A. L., Gendler, T. S., & Gross, J. J. (2014). Self-control in school-age children. Educational Psychologist, 49(3), 199–217.
• Duckworth, A. L., Shulman, E. P., Mastronarde, A. J., Patrick, S. D., Zhang, J., & Druckman, J. (2015). Will not want: Self-control rather than motivation explains the female advantage in report card grades. Learning and Individual Differences, 39, 13–23.
• Duckworth, A. L., Taxer, J. L., Eskreis-Winkler, L., Galla, B. M., & Gross, J. J. (2019b). Self-control and academic achievement. Annual Review of Psychology, 70, 373–399.

At Florida State, Duckworth started working with Anders Ericsson to integrate her grit concept of passion and perseverance with his study on purposeful practice. Participants in the National Spelling Bee nationwide were asked to complete Duckworth and colleagues' grit questionnaire and self-report how they prepared in the months preceding the final competition as part of a 2011 study. Combining three study methods—independent deliberate practice, being quizzed, and leisure reading—they discovered that spellers who were more tenacious in their deliberate practice performed better in the national final.

Although the above-described goal accomplishment and hierarchical goal structure may seem to prioritize effort above interest, in recent years Duckworth and her team have started to explore the passion strand of grit. In a study conducted in 2021, Duckworth and colleagues discovered that across samples of high school and undergraduate students, increased interest was associated with a willingness to put in more effort and a feeling of less exhaustion.

A tripartite taxonomy of character in the context of education was proposed in 2017 by Duckworth and a group of collaborators. Three categories are identified in this model for character attributes: intrapersonal (grit, self-control), intellectual (curiosity, creativity, zest, humor), and interpersonal (kindness, empathy, thankfulness, and social intelligence). This three-part theory elucidates the multifaceted aspect of character and establishes the foundation for an array of novel research endeavors that bear immense promise concerning character and character enhancement.

In keeping with character development, Duckworth has been working with her academic idol, Carol Dweck, to broaden the applicability of Dweck's mindset research and to comprehend the progressive development of good personal attributes.