Non-cognitive skills and achievement: A cross-national analysis of the association between academic perseverance and achievement
Open Access
- Author:
- Jang, Hyojung
- Graduate Program:
- Educational Theory and Policy
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- February 16, 2018
- Committee Members:
- Dana Lynn Mitra, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Gerald K Letendre, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
David P Baker, Committee Member
Liang Zhang, Committee Member
John David Mccarthy, Outside Member - Keywords:
- non-cognitive skills
grit
academic perseverance
achievement
cross-national comparisons
PISA - Abstract:
- This dissertation examines the association between academic perseverance—a non-cognitive skill—and academic achievement in a cross-national perspective. Large and well-established bodies of research have documented empirical evidence for the importance of intelligence or cognitive ability on academic achievement. Research on non-cognitive skills, in comparison, remains sparse and nascent. The extant non-cognitive skills literature from economics, psychology, sociology, and the broad field of education have recently provided evidence for the salience of several non-cognitive skills, particularly grit, which is defined by Angela Duckworth and colleagues (2007) as perseverance and passion for long-term goals. However, findings on grit are mixed, with some studies highlighting a significant role of the perseverance component of grit but not the passion component. Moreover, the lack of empirical evidence from cross-national studies indicates that no universal theoretical explanation about grit and achievement can be inferred yet. To fill this important void in the literature, this dissertation builds on and extends the recent research on grit within the larger non-cognitive skills literature and focuses on the perseverance component to introduce the concept of academic perseverance, which is more narrowly defined and domain-specific than grit. Thus, this dissertation provides some of the first cross-national evidence on the association between academic perseverance and academic achievement. Findings from regression analyses with fixed effects show that academic perseverance is positively and significantly associated with achievement across countries, net of between-country differences, as well as within all countries, above and beyond student demographics and between-school differences. These cross-national findings give support to the grit theory and buttress recent findings from a meta-analytic study of grit research highlighting the salience of the perseverance component of grit on academic achievement outcomes. Although there is much room for future studies to further examine the association between the full construct of grit and academic achievement outcomes when internationally valid measurement tools become available, this dissertation makes important theoretical and empirical contributions to the non-cognitive skills literature across multiple academic disciplines and the field of comparative and international education, which in turn would help inform education policy around the world.