Academic Resilience and the Four Cs: Confidence, Control, Composure, and Commitment

Academic resilience is defined as the ability to effectively deal with setback, stress or pressure in the academic setting. Although there is a large body of research focusing on general or life resilience, there has been little research into the issue of academic resilience. This paper utilises the Student Motivation Wheel (Martin, 2003a, 2003b) as a basis for conceptualising academic resilience and the Student Motivation Scale (SMS – Martin, 2001, 2002) as a basis for measuring it. The study found that academic resilience comprises self-belief (confidence), a sense of control, low anxiety (composure), and persistence (commitment) as assessed through administration of the SMS (that measures each of these four dimensions) to 400 Australian high school students. Implications for pedagogy are discussed. Resilience Why are some (often motivated) students debilitated by setbacks, poor performance, stress, and study pressure while others pick themselves up, recover, and move on? Why do some students get caught in a downward spiral of underachievement while others respond proactively to poor performance and break this downward spiral? Why do some students buckle under the pressure of school while others are energised and embrace the challenges before them? We suggest that the answer lies in academic resilience. In a general sense, resilience has been defined as the process of, capacity for, or outcome of successful adaptation despite challenging or threatening circumstances (Howard & Johnson, 2000). In the academic context, it is defined as students' ability to deal effectively with academic setbacks, stress, and study pressure. To date, the few studies that deal with academic resilience are focused on ethnic minority groups and extreme underachievers (eg. There has, however, been substantial focus on resilience in terms of broader life events (eg. resilience to disadvantaged backgrounds, poor parenting, family break-up, mental illness, drug addiction etc. However, studies of resilience as it pertains to school are still couched in terms of a young person's mental health and wellbeing and not in terms of their academic development. This paper explores a model that provides some guidance as to specific factors that underpin academic resilience and how to address them in the classroom context.) has developed a model of motivation – the Student Motivation Wheel – that reflects the thoughts, feelings, and behaviours underpinning academic engagement at school. The model separates motivation into factors that reflect enhanced motivation and those that reflect reduced motivation. These are called boosters and guzzlers respectively. Figure 1 …