The results of PISA 2012 study clearly indicate that there are positive connections between high performance and perseverance in the creative problem solving tasks (OECD, 2014). Perseverance is described as students’ willingness to work on difficult tasks even when encountering problems (OECD, 2013). Students with low potential but a high level of perseverance are more likely to be successful than students with high potential but a low level of perseverance (Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007). Scherer and Gustafsson (2015) suggest that willingness to engage with problem solving might be a crucial element of the construct and should therefore be assessed with scales directly incorporated into the tasks. In this study we examine a group of three countries with a strong relation between achievement and perseverance in PISA 2012 and three countries with weak or no such relation. The countries with strong association are Finland (perseverance effect 30 points, mean score 523 points), Sweden (25, 491) and Norway (22, 503). The countries with weak association are Netherlands (6, 511), Estonia (1, 515), and Italy (0, 510). The aim of this study is to explore why perseverance is related to problem solving scores in some countries and not others, even when cultural differences between the countries are not great. In Finland, top students were found to be more perseverant and to use more systematic approaches to problem solving than low achieving students (Ahonen & Nissinen, 2015). In this study we use two-level regression models to explore the effects of student background, attitudes and approaches to problem solving on the problem solving scores in the six countries and examine particularly which effects might intervene in the relation between perseverance and achievement.

Ahonen, A.K. & Nissinen, K. (2015). Ongelmanratkaisusta ymmärrykseen. [Problem solving in PISA 2012, results in Finland]. In J. Välijärvi & P. Kupari PISA 2012 tutkimustuloksia. Millä eväillä uuteen nousuun? Opetus-ja kulttuuriministeriön julkaisuja 2015:6.Opetus- ja kulttuuriministerio, (pp. 50–71). Duckworth, A., Peterson, C., Matthews, M., & Kelly, D. (2007). Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(6), pp.1087–1101. OECD (2013). PISA 2012 results: Ready to learn – Students’ engagement, drive and self-beliefs (vol. III) Paris: OECD Publishing. OECD (2014). PISA 2012 results – Creative problem solving (vol. V) Paris: OECD Publishing. Scherer, R., & Gustafsson, J.-E. (2015). The relations among openness, perseverance, and performance in creative problem solving: A substantive-methodological approach. Thinking Skills and Creativity 18 (2015), 4–17.