Abstract
This paper investigates the effects of grit (“passion and perseverance for a long-term goal”) and growth mindset in grade 11 high school students (Terminological clarification: Throughout this paper the term ‘students’ refers to the pupils in secondary education before university. In the South African discourse they are typically refered to as ‘learners’.), as they code a non-trivial programming project in Java. Students are guided through the stages of the development of a programming project by the teacher and are given a rubric describing the criteria for assessment. The project is scaffolded by the teacher. Assessments are frequent with detailed feedback provided to the students. The students’ grit and mindset are measured using questionnaires to form part of the quantitative data, together with the number of times each student submitted his project. Six students were interviewed to provide detailed qualitative data to interrogate the qualitative data. Although the correlation between the grit and mindset was weak, a stronger correlation was determined between the number of submissions and the project scores..
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Blackwell, L.S., Trzesniewski, K.H., Dweck, C.S.: Implicit theories of intelligence predict achievement across an adolescent transition: a longitudinal study and an intervention. Child Dev. 78(1), 246–263 (2007)
Brookhart, S.M.: How to Give Effective Feedback to Your Students. ASCD, Alexandra (2008)
Creswell, J.W.L., Clark, V.L.P.: Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods Research, vol. 2. Sage, Thousand Oaks (2011)
Creswell, J.W.L., Plano-Clark, V.L.P., Gutmann, M.L., Hanson, W.E.: Advanced mixed methods research designs. In: Tashakkori, A., Teddlie, C. (eds.) Handbook of Mixed Methods in Social and Behavioral Research, pp. 209–240. Sage, Thousand Oaks (2003)
Cutts, Q., Cutts, E., Draper, S., O’Donnell, P., Saffrey, P.: Manipulating mindset to positively influence introductory programming performance. In: Proceedings 41st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE 2010), p. 431 (2010)
Duckworth, A.L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M.D., Kelly, D.R.: Grit: perseverance and passion for long-term goals. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 92(6), 1087–1101 (2007)
Duckworth, A.L., Quinn, P.D.: Development and validation of the short grit scale (grit-s). J. Pers. Assess. 91(2), 166–174 (2009)
Dweck, C.S.: Test your Mindset. Ballantine, New York (2006)
Kohler, B., Gluchow, M., Brigge, B.: Teaching basic software engineering to senior high school students. In: Information Systems and Technology for Organizations in a Networked Society, pp. 149–166. BusinessScience (2014)
McCartney, R., Eckerdal, A., Mostram, J.E., Sanders, K., Zander, C.: Successful students – Strategies for getting unstuck. SIGCSE Bull. 39, 156–160 (2007)
Mueller, C.M., Dweck, C.S.: Praise for intelligence can undermine children’s motivation and performance. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 75(1), 33–52 (1998)
Shepard, L.A.: Linking formative assessment to scaffolding. Educ. Leadersh. 63(3), 66–70 (2005)
Vygotsky, L.S.: Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (1978)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Kench, D., Hazelhurst, S., Otulaja, F. (2016). Grit and Growth Mindset Among High School Students in a Computer Programming Project: A Mixed Methods Study. In: Gruner, S. (eds) ICT Education. SACLA 2016. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 642. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47680-3_18
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47680-3_18
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-47679-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-47680-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)