Academic Grit In Junior Middle School Students

Academic grit refers to such positive psychological qualities as determination,focus,and resilience that are displayed by primary and secondary school students in the academic field.Junior high school students are at a critical stage in their academic development.Academic stress and frustration can easily lead to academic burnout,avoidance and abandonment.Some students who have low tolerance and stress resistance may have evident learning and life adaptation problems.It is one of the vital works for school mental health education to cultivate and promote the quality of middle school students’academic grit so that they can learn to face academic setbacks and difficulties positively.Based on the perspective of growth mindset,this study explored the influencing factors of junior high school students’academic grit,developed a school-based curriculum,and further tested the effect of a curriculum intervention to provide a reference for the cultivation of junior high school students’academic grit.This paper consists of two studies:study 1 is a survey study,using the questionnaire survey method.Based on stratified cluster sampling,1171 samples(the effective rate is94.4%;average age:13.47;age range:11～16),were selected to explore the current situation and potential types of junior high school students’academic grit,and to detect the effect of growth mindset on junior high school students’academic grit.study 2 was an intervention study,which developed a school-based curriculum for academic grit from the perspective of growth mindset and then tested the effect of intervention through a6-week course.The second study adopted the quasi-experimental design of the experimental and control group.79 students were selected from two classes on the first day,including 38 in the experimental group and 41 in the control group.All subjects in the two groups were tested before,during,and after the experiment.After the above research,the following results were obtained:1.The academic grit of junior middle school students was above the average level(3.85±0.97),and the grade difference was significant.The students in grade 7 were significantly higher than those in grade 8 and grade 9(4.08 VS 3.90 VS 3.66,η_p~2=0.59).The results of potential profile analysis(LPA)showed that junior middle school students’academic grit had three categories:low(18.2%),medium(45.8%),and high(36.0%).Growth mindset significantly influenced the potential types of academic grit in junior middle school students,and the possibility of the high growth mindset is considerably higher in the high academic grit group(p=0.01).According to the signal detection analysis,the optimal truncation value of the total score of academic grit in the low grit group and high grit group was 31.5 and 41.5 respectively,with the medium group as the reference.2.On the basis of the positive personality theory and the three-dimensional theory of academic grit,this study tends to design both curriculum scheme and content from the perspective of growth mindset.Besides,this study orchestrates courses through the psychological metaphor---"setting sail".Based on the empirically oriented teaching design,the class training mode with growth mindset and the integration of various teaching methods,it develops a set of school-based curriculum on academic grit for junior high school students.The course includes four parts,namely,drawing steely charts,setting steely sails,steering steely boats,arriving at steely harbors and so on.3.The course intervention demonstrated that the level of academic grit in the experimental group was significantly higher than that in the experimental group(t=2.73,p<0.05,d=0.55),and there was no significant difference between the two group in the pre-test.Still,academic grit in the experimental group was significantly higher than that in the control group(t=2.31,p<0.05,d=0.52).It showed that course intervention had a certain effect on improving the levels of academic grit of junior middle school students.The experimental effect also reflected in academic emotion,academic self-efficacy,and academic achievement.Compared with the control group,the experimental group had significant improvement in academic emotion and academic self-efficacy(t=2.13,p<0.05,d=0.36;t=2.36,p<0.05,d=0.38).This study shows qualitative differences in the level of academic grit of junior high school students on the individual level,and growth mindset has a significant impact on the classes of academic grit.Curriculum design and intervention based on the perspective of growth mindset can effectively enhance the levels of academic grit of junior high school students.This study has certain implications and guidance for the cultivation of positive psychological qualities of primary and middle school students.