Are gritty children more engaged in math? Triarchic model of grit, math self-efficacy beliefs, and math engagement in Chinese children in Macau

Educational and psychological scientists continue to discover conflicting evidence on the mechanisms linking grit to academic achievement and engagement. Using a cross-sectional design, our research addresses this issue by assessing links between each of the dimensions of the triarchic model of grit (i.e., perseverance of effort, consistency of interests, and adaptability to situations) to self-efficacy and behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and social engagement in math among primary school students in Macau. Only perseverance was significantly related to higher math self-efficacy beliefs, which, in turn were significantly associated with higher behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and social engagement. Perseverance was also directly linked to higher behavioral engagement in math, and indirectly related to behavioral engagement in math via higher math self-efficacy beliefs. Adaptability was associated with greater cognitive, emotional, and social engagement in math. Consistency was significantly, albeit weakly, associated with social engagement, even when controlling for conscientiousness and other related demographic factors such as age and gender. Further, this study showed that grit's dimensions exhibited small to large effect sizes with math self-efficacy and engagement dimensions. Our research suggests that grit's dimensions appear distinctly related to learning processes and engagement outcomes in math.