Teaching Persistence Through Sports

Would you like your pupils to have greater persistence?  Would your parents like their children to learn determination at school?  These are uncontroversial questions.

Persistence (or "Grit" as American psychologist Angela Lee Duckworth calls it) is a predictor of future high achievement. More reliable as such than either IQ or early success. Pupils demonstrating this quality are more likely to be successful - whatever their field of endeavour.  If it's that important, you might expect schools to spend a considerable amount of time and resources working out how best to develop it.  Building determination is certainly an area in which physical activities might reasonably be expected to contribute.

Learning Objectives are fashionable.  However, in plans of lessons and coaching sessions (where these exist), reference to developing personal qualities is curiously absent. Objectives focus on skill and strategy outcomes, which influence how teachers set about their work.  Practices, drills, games, technical input, tactical commentary.  Could these lessons be used to develop persistence as well?  If so, how?

First would come a belief that these qualities can be developed.  If they are fixed, and sport only gives the determined pupil an opportunity to demonstrate his genetic inheritance, then there would be no point in trying.  However, no science would support this view.  But, in order for determination to improve, children need to believe that it is a desirable quality, and that it can be improved through effort.

They would need to understand that it is a psychological skill, and entirely unrelated to athletic ability. It is available to all children, not just the fast runners and co-ordinate games players.  And to see that it has a value beyond physical activity: persistence learned through games can contribute to success in a variety of spheres, including academic ones.  They would need to understand that it is a personal quality, and has nothing to do with defeating an opponent.  Victory may sometimes be a consequence, but it is not a condition.  It is also linked with what the individual wants to achieve: goals pursued with determination have to have individual significance, not be imposed from above by a teacher.

How can this be delivered?  It requires an organisational culture which recognises and values this quality.  It will be regularly referred to, acknowledged as desirable and reinforced with prominent role models and appropriate messages.  Corridors festooned with pictures, messages and quotes.  There is no shortage of possibilities here.  Determination will be praised, not just when it occurs, but also when children seek to develop it.  Small triumphs to reach personal goals should be celebrated as partial successes, rather than castigated as failures to be entirely successful.  It will be related to previous experience: occasions when children triumphed against the temptation to stop.  This dispels the fear of the unknown.  Discussion of how it feels to be tempted to stop, and the corresponding feeling of triumph of having overcome this enables pupils to understand that everyone experiences this in the same way.  That giving up, or not, is an individual choice.  There is no determination without the temptation to stop, in the same way that there is no courage without the experience of fear.  Persistence must be linked to past achievement and individual ambition.

Can there be a dual outcome lesson?  Is it possible to teach skills and determination side by side?  Can fitness outcomes be delivered alongside persistence ones?  For some reason, skills have become the holy grail of PE and Games lessons.  And yet skill learning varies considerably between children.  Persistence is a quality that is not dependent upon physical ability, and therefore success in this dimension is potentially available to all. 

There is no history of delivering persistence outcomes in PE. Universities don't appear to prepare their students to do so.  That can't be because no one thinks it is important, surely?  Most of the developed world exists without being able to bowl a leg break or drag flick a hockey ball.  But persistence is a quality writ large in every culture.  Maybe one is more important than the other.