Grit Levels and Academic Performance in Emirati Male and Female College Level Students in the Emirate of Dubai
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Date
2016-12
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The British University in Dubai (BUiD)
Abstract
Many researchers argue that grit a non-cognitive skill is important for students to perform better academically and to improve their skills. It is also believed that once students have grit, they will be able to overcome their setbacks and cope up with failure, because they believe that they can improve their abilities and succeed. However, being a new scientific study there has been a few studies in this field.
The purpose of this thesis is to draw the attention to the importance of grit as a non-cognitive skill that enables students to overcome setbacks and cope with failure. Also, grit enables students to believe in their abilities that they can improve and succeed. This can be considered important for educational policy makers to focus on grit as an equal to cognitive skill, in order to develop grit in students to become high achievers.
The data which was collected and analysed from Emirati tertiary level students both male and female in Dubai attempted to give an idea about the level of grit in the Emirati sample- if they are gritty or not- and the way they overcome setbacks and failure. The samples in this study are male and female Emirati students studying at a tertiary institution in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). These include students studying at different majors and are at different levels or years of study.
The methodology used in this study is mixed methods and is an explanatory sequence, which starts with a quantitative method with an online questionnaire to find if there is a relationship between grit and academic performance in Grade Point Average (GPA). The second part of the methodology is the qualitative method, which uses a semi-structured interview and the approach being narrative. The narrative approach is used to understand the meaning of the participants’ experience regarding grit. The findings of this study have slightly the same findings and results to similar studies conducted by Duckworth and other scholars and researchers, which is that there is a relationship between grit and academic performance, where this study focused on students’ current GPA. However, the participants of this study are Emirati tertiary level students both male and female studying in different majors and levels and this is the difference with other major studies conducted in this field.
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Keywords
Academic achievement., Grit levels, Emirati students, United Arab Emirates (UAE)