Development and Initial Validation of the L2-Teacher Grit Scale

Ekaterina Sudina
 Tony Vernon
 Henry Foster
 Heather Del Villano
 Shoshannah Hernandez
 Daniel Beck
 Luke Plonsky

Grit—“perseverance and passion for long-term goals” (Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007, p. 1087)—has attracted the attention of researchers in psychology, business, and education. Following on research that explores the domain specificity of grit, this study introduces the L2-Teacher Grit Scale developed to measure grit specifically among English language teachers (N = 202). The results demonstrated, first, that the L2TGS possessed sufficient internal-consistency reliability. A subsequent principal components analysis revealed a two-component structure, thus yielding evidence in favor of construct validity. A one-tailed Pearson’s test for positive correlation between Duckworth and Quinn’s (2009) domain-general Grit–S and L2TGS scores established concurrent validity of the new measure. Lastly, the L2TGS exhibited a stronger predictive validity, explaining approximately 21% of the variance in L2-teacher retention-related scores compared to the Grit–S, which was a statistically nonsignificant predictor accounting for 4% of total variance. Of note, female teachers had higher levels of grit. Our findings indicate support for an occupation-specific approach to grit.

TESOL Quarterly

Wiley-Blackwell (on behalf of TESOL International Association)

55

1

10.1002/tesq.581