9.3 Temperament, Mindset, and Grit

Temperament.

People vary in how active they are, how they react to situations physiologically and emotionally, and how they regulate these reactions. Temperament is a concept that has been used to account for some of these variations. Temperament is an innate characteristic that can be modified throughout development by genes and experiences (Posner & Rothbart, 2007). Temperament has been quantified and categorized in many different ways.

A classic approach to temperament is that of Thomas and Chess (1977) who identified three clusters of characteristics in children: easy, difficult, or slow to warm up. Easy children make up about 40 percent of those studied (Chess & Thomas, 1987, 1991). They show regular patterns of eating and sleeping, show positive reactions to new people and situations, and respond with moderate intensity. About 10% of children are identified as difficulty, demonstrate irregular body rhythms, have high activity levels, have negative reactions to new situations, and tend to react with high intensity. The children who are categorized as slow to start have low activity levels, have a difficult time with new situations, and low intensity of reactions. Subsequent work has shown that it is not only the temperament itself that determines outcomes, but the interaction of the child and parent’s (teacher’s) temperaments that is essential for a healthy outcome. Children with easy temperaments tend to learn more readily. Given supportive parents, teachers, and learning contexts, all children can learn.

Other approaches to temperament have identified three dimensions of temperament: surgency-extroversion, negative affectivity, and orienting-regulation (Rothbatt & Bates, 2006). The surgency-extraversion dimension includes measures of activity level, sensations seeking, shyness.  The negative affectivity dimension includes scales of discomfort, fear, sadness. The third dimension is that of orienting-regulation indicates the degree of effortful control one has in terms of attentional focus, inhibitory control and perceptual sensitivity. This dimension is strongly linked to the development of executive functions (Posner & Rothbart, 2007). These dimensions of temperament have physiological underpinnings (Posner & Rothbart, 2007).  Effortful control is controlled by areas within the frontal cortex. As described in Chapter 3, the frontal cortex develops slowly with growth spurts in the toddler years and during adolescence. The growth in the frontal cortex corresponds to development in effortful control and self-regulation. Changes in aspects of temperament such as attentional and effortful control may reflect developmental changes in the brain.

Temperament has a strong relationship with academic performance. This relationship has its basis in biological structures and processes for attention, memory, emotional processing, and executive controls. The way that individuals process their interactions with others and stimuli in the environment are shaped by their temperaments. In schools we see this in many ways. Attentional and executive control are highly related to school success; those with high levels of focus and control, are more academically successful. How students demonstrate mastery motivation, a persistence in problem solving or mastering new challenges also relates to education. Bramlett, Scott, and Roswell (2000) found that temperament, especially persistence, predicted school success.

Mindset.

One’s mindset refers to their beliefs about their abilities, such as intelligence or temperament, and whether they are stable or changeable. According the mindset theory (Dweck, 2006) people have who believe they can change their basic attributes have a growth mindset (“I can learn this.”), whereas those who believe their attributes are set (“I am not good at math.”) have a fixed mindset. Dweck and her colleagues have demonstrated that students show improved academic performance with a growth mindset. That is, students who had a belief that their efforts would help them succeed, did better academically than those students who believed that they had attributes such as being smart, or not good at reading. An early meta-analysis supported this idea (Burnett et al., 2013). However, a more recent meta-analysis casts doubt on the strength of the impact of mindset on academic achievement and training programs to enhance growth mindset (Sisk et al., 2018). Their analysis demonstrated a weak and highly variable relationship of mindset and academic achievement with effect sizes from <.35 to null. This effect was moderated by age, socioeconomic status, and academic risk. Such that students who are low income and academically at risk may benefit from mindset training. Sisk et al. conclude that educational resources are better allocated to other educational interventions that show a more impactful effect size.

Grit.

Similar to mindset and in contrast to temperament, grit refers to a way of thinking and the resulting actions. An individual exhibiting grit shows resilience or tenacity. An individual with a growth mindset is more likely to demonstrate grit, than one with a fixed mindset. Duckwork et al. (2007) found that having grit was related to stronger academic performance.  As with mindset, many schools have jumped to the apply grit in classrooms. However, the research is not consistent in supporting mass adoption of the concept in schools. (Dugan et al, 2019; Usher, et al., 2019). Usher et al. reported that grit was not correlated with academic achievement, but self-efficacy, a belief in the ability to perform a task, was. They cautioned that their measures of grit seemed to reflect an overall trait, whereas their measure of self-efficacy was more task specific.  The evidence at this time does not support wide-scale application and training in schools or comparisons among schools (Duckworth & Yeager, 2015; Usher, et al., 2018).