Cultural Attitudes and Productive Persistence

Here's an NPR story focused on cultural attitudes with respect what matters in terms of learning: "Struggle For Smarts? How Eastern And Western Cultures Tackle Learning" While the term isn't used in the story, in other settings--including last year's math conference here in Washington--Stigler and his colleagues talk about the critical role of "productive persistence" in student learning, and it's been a particular area of focus for the Re-Thinking Precollege Math project, and in particular a small working group focused on Student Attributes for Math Success; this group has developed some classroom resources that math faculty can use to address issues like productive persistence through the design of classroom activities and environments.