The Relations Between Grit, Math Determination, and Persistence on Challenging Math Problems

2019.

Miele D., Browman A., Shen C., Vasilyeva M., Tyumeneva Y. A.

Three studies conducted in the U.S. and Russia examine a novel pathway by which the perseverance component of the personality trait grit might predict college students’ behavioral persistence when solving challenging math problems. Specifically, we focus on the intervening role of what we refer to as math determination, which captures students’ perceived tendency to persevere on challenging math problems. Across studies, we found that math determination was correlated with behavioral math persistence, whereas grit was not. Despite there being no correlation between grit and math persistence, we found statistically significant indirect effects of grit on persistence through math determination in all three studies: the grittier students were, the more they viewed themselves as capable of persevering on challenging math problems, which ultimately predicted their math persistence at a later time point.

Keywords: настойчивость, grit, решение математических задач, упорство, math determination, math persistence, math problem solving