Grit and attitude: a predictability study of community college student performance in corequisite math courses

Many community colleges are providing accelerative interventions for underprepared
students by allowing them to enroll in corequisite math and English courses. These courses allow
students to enroll in both remediation and college-level math and English and complete them
within a semester. However, no studies have looked at how noncognitive factors like Grit and
attitudes towards mathematics (ATM) of students influence their success in corequisite gateway
math courses.
This non-experimental study examined the relationship and extent to which noncognitive
factors, like Grit and ATM, influence student success in corequisite math gateway courses. Grit
and ATM were found to be correlated to academic performance (AP) in both college-math ready
(CR) and not college-math ready (NCR) students. These two noncognitive factors also
moderately predicted AP in the corequisite math courses for both student groups. The
distribution of ATM significantly varied between the two student groups whereas Grit was not
distributed significantly differently between CR and NCR students.
These findings illustrate the need for teachers to be aware of the importance of the role of
noncognitive factors in the AP of CR and NCR students.