Perseverance,passion and poverty: Examining the association between grit and reading achievement in high-poverty schools in South Africa |
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| Institution: | 1. Unit of Research Studies and Indicators, National Institute of Educational Evaluation, Uruguay;2. Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy, Ghent University, Belgium;1. Faculty of Engineering / Sana’a University, Sana’a, Yemen;2. College of Engineering-Unaizah / Qassim University, Saudi Arabia;3. Faculty of Information Technology / Saba University, Sana’a, Yemen;1. Department of Economics, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom;2. Department of Economics, University of Bern, Switzerland;1. Departmento de Psicología, Universidad de Oviedo, España;2. Departmento de Educación del Gobierno del Principado de Asturias, España;3. Rectorado, Universidad de Nebrija, España;1. International Labour Organisation, Skills for Prosperity Programme (SfP-SEA), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia;2. School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, Glamorgan Building, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3WT, UK |
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| Abstract: | This paper examines whether school characteristics moderate the association between grit and reading achievement in a sample of Grade 6 learners in high-poverty contexts. The analysis makes use of data from 2383 learners distributed across 60 township and rural schools in three provinces of South Africa. Indicators of school functionality are used to split the sample of schools into three groups (low, medium, and high functionality) and separate models of reading achievement are estimated for each group. The econometric analysis points to evidence of variation in the association between grit and reading achievement by school functionality, with a stronger association estimated for learners in more functional schools. The major contributions of this paper are as follows: Firstly, this paper is one of only a handful of studies that estimate the relationship between grit and academic achievement in a middle-income country, and the first to estimate this relationship among primary school students in an African context. Second, the results provide empirical evidence in support of the hypothesis that school characteristics interact with non-cognitive skills to produce learning outcomes, a relationship that has received scant attention in the literature to date. |
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| Keywords: | Socio-emotional skills Grit Literacy Poverty |
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