A recent study has emphasized the importance of non-cognitive skills in academic success. “The results showed that the association between non-cognitive skills and academic achievement increased across development.” This finding validates earlier research by Angela Duckworth that emphasized the importance of non-cognitive skills: those things that aren’t measured on traditional intelligence metrics: IQ in learning. These “soft” skills are less conscious. They “are associated with an individual’s personality, temperament, and attitudes.” Duckworth defines grit as perseverance and passion for long term goals and maintains that the “achievement of difficult goals entails not only talent but also the sustained and focused application of talent over time.”
Grit is the ability to persevere despite mistakes and obstacles. In a 2018 study, neuroscientists at Caltech discovered that mistakes set off an almost instantaneous chain reaction of productive brain activity. “The brain of a person making an error lights up with the kind of activity that encodes information more deeply.” As Albert Einstein said: “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”
Personal traits such as motivation and self-regulation are inherited and can predict academic success beyond cognitive skills. However, how the relationship between non-cognitive skills and academic achievement changes over development is unclear. “By analyzing DNA, researchers constructed a ‘genetic snapshot’ of a child’s predisposition towards these skills… By the end of compulsory education, genetic dispositions towards non-cognitive skills were equally as important as those related to cognitive abilities in predicting academic success.”
In conclusion, as Duckworth stated: “We have to learn to replace the thought ‘I’m stupid’ with another thought, which is ‘I’m learning,’
