Cohen, C. (2017, November 22). Review of Grit in the classroom: Building perseverance for excellence in today’s students, by L. Sanguras. Education Review, 24. http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/er.v24.2300 November 22, 2017 ISSN 1094-5296 Sanguras, L. (2017). Grit in the classroom: Building perseverance for excellence in today’s students. Waco, TX: Prufrock Press. Pp. 175 ISBN: 978-1-61821-631-1 Reviewed by Cynthia Cohen Institute of Technology United States The timely topic of cultivating grit among contemporary students is relevant for many educational audiences: in-service teachers, pre- service teachers, graduate school faculty training these teachers, postsecondary researchers, school psychologists, school counsellors, school principals, school administrators, and parents. So when first reading Laila Y. Sanguras’s 2017 book, Grit in the Classroom, my initial question was the following: who were her intended audiences? Sanguras directly addresses teachers—both in- service and pre-service—as the readers for this book. But she does not mention any of the other potential audience groups mentioned above, and she does not consider their professional responsibilities in her relevant recommendations. While I find Sanguras Education Review /Reseñas Educativas 2 writes in a warm, personable voice, and she makes valuable analytical points about the psychological concept of grit and about how teachers can practically develop grit in their students, I do not recommend this book as priority reading for in-service and pre-service teachers due to its (a) weak foundation of evidentiary research, (b) omission of the debates over grit research, (c) evidence of the author’s fixed mindset, (d) distractingly folksy writing style, and (e) lack of an original theoretical or empirical contribution to the debates over grit in the classroom. One weakness I find in this book is its sparse evidentiary research base. Sanguras omits many prominent research studies related to grit and focuses almost entirely on the articles from the best-known researcher on this subject, Angela Duckworth, and her colleagues (Duckworth & Eskreis-Winkler, 2013; Duckworth, Kirby, Tsukayama, Bernstein, & Ericsson, 2011; Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews & Kelly, 2007; Duckworth & Quinn, 2009). But there are many other significant researchers on the topic of grit (Kaufman, 2013; Strayhorn, 2014; Wolters & Hussain, 2015) who should have been included in addition to Duckworth. As a result of the abbreviated literature review, it is unclear what new knowledge Sanguras hopes to contribute to the discussion of grit. So the first deficiency of this book for in-service and pre-service teachers is the paucity of its research foundation. A related weakness is that Sanguras doesn’t acknowledge relevant academic debates over the efficacy of grit in student education. A recent research study by Rimfeld et al. (2016) critiqued the concept of grit for offering no new insights on student behavior than previous academic research on the concept of “conscientiousness.” This earlier research on “conscientiousness” that was a basis for contemporary studies on grit is another omission in the literature review section of this book. Sanguras ignores important studies on “conscientiousness” by researchers such as Brent Roberts (Fayard, Roberts, Robins, & Watson, 2012). She also overlooks Alfie Kohn, author of The Myth of the Spoiled Child (2014), which describes some downsides to the cultivation of gritty students, and cites the 2007 study by Miller & Wrosch that argues that sometimes giving up is healthier than persisting in the pursuit of unattainable goals. I am not agreeing with these critics of grit, but I believe that Sanguras needs to present fairly and to weigh in on these debates between grit proponents and grit detractors. Another flaw in this book is that Sanguras herself shows a fixed mindset in some of her recommendations for cultivating student grittiness. In Chapter 3 Sanguras concludes with three recommendations for how teachers can help students to build grit: (1) teachers should make hard assignments and assessments the norm and require students to apply themselves to succeed (2) teachers need to help students identify their talents and encourage them to achieve excellence in those areas (3) teachers need to recognize their key role in helping students to form their identities. In this second recommendation, Sanguras falls into the common view of student “talents” as being fixed and innate. Her conception of students’ talents as fixed is at odds with the research by Dweck (2002, 2006) and others that have persuasively shown that students can develop their intelligence and their talents with effort and strategies. The author also shows a fixed mindset in Chapter 1 when she draws a heavy contrast between grit and intelligence, and she implies that intelligence, too, is innate and fixed. In these passages and others, Sanguras reflects a fixed mindset in her own thinking. Given that one of the main conclusions found by Sanguras in Chapter 3 is that teachers should increase the academic rigor of their classes in order to build student grittiness, it is strange that this book lacks academic rigor itself. As I have already mentioned, the literature review is deficient. In Review of Grit in the Classroom by C. Cohen 3 addition, the author’s writing style is breezy and non-academic. Shouldn’t Sanguras start by writing an academically rigorous book herself before recommending other teachers raise their academic requirements for their students? Her address of the readers with second-person viewpoint, folksy and sarcastic asides, and digressive personal anecdotes make for an entertaining, but also a distracting, reading experience. Certainly, teachers will not learn standards of academic rigor by reading this book. Most importantly, Sanguras is not contributing original theories or original empirical evidence that will forward the contemporary research related to grit in the classroom. In sum, there is no important new information in this book. Sanguras successfully provides a review of the concept of grit, and she provides some case studies that illuminate different aspects of how students have more grit than other students. But she does not systematically study any aspects of grittiness among students or how teachers cultivate grittiness in their students that forwards the academic conversation in a significant manner. Despite the fact I do not view this book as a high priority read or as offering significant, original information on the subject of grit, I did find Sanguras to be a reflective raconteur of her personal teaching experiences involving the important subject of cultivating grittiness among students, and her warm voice and thoughtful observations are a welcome way to pass an afternoon or two. References Duckworth, A., & Eskreis-Winkler, L. (2013). True grit. Observer, 26(4), 1-3. https://sites.sas.upenn.edu/duckworth/pages/research Duckworth, A., Kirby, T., Tsukayama, E., Bernstein, H., & Ericsson, K. (2011). Deliberate practice spells success: Why grittier competitors triumph at the national spelling bee. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2(2). Duckworth, A., Peterson, C., Matthews, M., & Kelly, D. (2007). Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(6), 1087-1101. Duckworth, A., & Quinn, P. (2009). Development and validation of the short grit scale (Grit-S). Journal of Personality Assessment, 91, 166-174. Dweck, C. (2002). Messages that motivate: How praise molds students’ beliefs, motivation, and performance (in surprising ways). In J. Aronson (Ed.), Improving academic achievement: Impact of psychological factors on education (pp. 37-60). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York, NY: Random House. Fayard, J., Roberts, B., Robins, R., & Watson, D. (2012). Uncovering the affective core of conscientiousness: The role of self-conscious emotions. Journal of Personality, 80, 1-32. Kaufman, S. (2013). Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined. New York: Basic Books. Kohn, A. (2014). The Myth of the Spoiled Child. Boston: Beacon Press. Rimfeld, K., Kovas, Y., Dale, P., & Plomin, R. (2016). True grit and genetics: Predicting academic achievement from personality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 111(5), 780-789. Strayhorn, T. (2014). What role does grit play in the academic success of black male collegians at predominantly white institutions? Journal of African American Studies, 18(1), 1-10. Wolters, C. & Hussain, M. (2015). Investigating Grit and Its Relations with College Students' Self- Regulated Learning and Academic Achievement. Metacognition and Learning, 10(3), 293-311. Education Review /Reseñas Educativas 4 About the Reviewer Dr. Cynthia Cohen is an adjunct lecturer at the Institute of Technology. She holds a PhD from SUNY Buffalo, an MA from the University of London, and a BA from Yale University. She is currently revising a book manuscript about the effectiveness of dialogic and discussion-based teaching methods and is researching the use of a capability approach to discuss Common Core State Standards. Education Review/Reseñas Educativas/Resenhas Educativas is supported by the edXchange initiative’s Scholarly Communications Group at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University. 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