Quantitative dogmatism in character assessment and its implications for education: A case study of grit

In a recent decade, research linking personality and character traits with educational and professional attainment led to a push for incorporating character and personality assessments into school curricula. This trend is exemplified in the partnership between positive psychology and character education, where grit, a personality/character trait denoting perseverance and passion for long‐term goals, represents one of the rapidly accepted, yet controversial, concepts. In this paper, the author conducts a critical literature review of grit, situating the construct in a larger historical context of personality testing and character education reform. The author argues that the construct validation practices employed by grit researchers create an epistemological climate where character studies and character education threaten to become yet another population sorting mechanism instead of advancing human agency.