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THE RED SOCKSThe Offic ial Publication of the Department of Student Development Eighth Issue Sept 2005

ocketing through sunlit areas in the mid-Atlantic, Peter Blake had been radioing daily

race reports to listeners all over New Zealand.Blake heard a terrific crash and felt the boatslow. Racing on deck, he found a tangle of

wreckage the lofty mast hadcollapsed.In Auckland, teenager Mark Oramswas painting his own sailing boatwhen he heard Blakes next reporton that day in 1981. It was totalcatastrophe, the end of all ourhopes and dreams, he says. Mostof his countrymen thought thesame: Blakes huge racing yachtCeramco New Zealand was reallytheir boat because the 33-year-old skipper hadpersuaded local people to finance and build her, andlocal boys to sail her.But Blake sat down with his shattered crew and had acup of tea. This is what were going to do, he said andexplained his plan. He added:If anyone wants to getdemoralized, come and see me and well do it together.There were no takers.Making a temporary rig out of the wreckage, the crewsailed over 6000 kilometres, following a different route tofind better winds, and drove themselves so hard theyreached Cape Town ahead of more than a third of thefleet. Just over six weeks later, with a new mast, Blakesailed into Auckland and won the next leg of theWhitbread Around the World Race.

Thousands lined the harbour and went out in boats togive him a heros welcome. Blake turned disaster intotriumph, says Orams. It was an amazing feat ofleadership and resilience.

Academic Resilience

Adapted from Motivation and academic resilience: developing a model for studentenhancement by Dr Andrew Martin 2002

Introduction

In a perfect world, students would not only be energised and driven toachieve to their potential but also equipped to deal effectively withacademic setbacks, study pressure, and stress in the school setting.This would be the model student from a motivation perspective. To date,however, researchers and practitioners have focused on the energy anddrive of students and not so much on their ability to deal with pressureand setback. That is, there has been a focus on motivating students, butnot so much on enhancing their academic resilience.

Motivation

Motivation can be conceptualised as students' energy and drive to learn,work effectively, and achieve to their potential at school and thebehaviours that follow from this energy and drive. Motivation plays alarge part in students' interest in and enjoyment of school and study.Motivation also underpins their achievement.

Academic resi lience

It may be, however, that an energy and drive to learn, work effectively,and achieve to one's potential is not sufficient to deal with academicsetbacks or excessive study pressure and stress. Without some level ofresilience to these types of challenges, the motivated student's gainsmay well be lost. This issue of resilience brings into consideration anumber of questions. Why are some (often motivated) studentsdebilitated by setbacks, poor performance, stress, and study pressure

whereas others pick themselves up, recover, and move on? Why dosome students get caught in a downward spiral of underachievementwhereas others respond proactively to poor performance and break thisdownward spiral? Why do some students crumble under the pressure ofschool whereas others are energised and embrace the challengesbefore them? Adapted from Readers Digest December 2004 issueThe answer lies in academic resilience. In a general sense, resilience has been defined as the process of, capacity for, or outcome ofsuccessful adaptation despite challenging or threatening circumstances. In the academic context, I define academic resilience asstudents' ability to deal effectively with academic setbacks, stress, and study pressure. Surprisingly, academic resilience has notreceived a great deal of attention in the research literature.

Research has shown that resilient young people have a number of protective factors in their lives. Protective factors (a) reduce the

impact of negative events, (b) help individuals avoid or resist problematic pathways, and (c) promote positive and successfulpathways. The research has also shown that young people who lack resilience have a number of risk factors in their lives.

School is an important place where resilience in young people can be enhanced. However, studies of resilience as it pertains toschool are still couched in terms of a young person's mental health and wellbeing and not in terms of their academic development. Ifacademic resilience is pursued along the same lines as the larger body of research into general resilience, it can be proposed thatenhancing academic resilience requires us to enhance the protective factors in students' lives and reduce the risk factors.

I therefore propose a simple separation of measures into factors that enhance motivation and academic resilience and those thatreduce motivation and academic resilience. These I call `boosters' and `guzzlers' respectively. I then separate boosters and guzzlersinto thoughts (and/or feelings) and behaviours. Thus there are booster thoughts and booster behaviours. There are also guzzlerthoughts and guzzler behaviours. Booster thoughts are measured through self-belief, learning focus, and value of schooling; boosterbehaviours are measured through persistence, planning and monitoring, and study management; guzzler thoughts/feelings aremeasured through anxiety and low control; and guzzler behaviours are measured through failure avoidance and self-sabotage.

Academic resi lience revi si ted

Where does academic resilience fit into this model? It will be recalled that resilient individuals tend to be high on what are referred toas protective factors and individuals low or lacking in resilience are high on risk factors. In the school setting, I propose that there area number of student-level protective and risk factors that contribute to academic resilience and that these are boosters and guzzlersrespectively. It can be inferred that students high on boosters and low on guzzlers are resilient to academic setback and deal with

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schoolwork pressures and stress effectively. Students low on boosters and high on guzzlers are not so resilient to academic setbackand do not deal with schoolwork pressures and stress very effectively.

Strategies for intervention using this model

At a meta-level, intervention designed to enhance students' motivation and academic resilience involves improving students' (a)approach to their schoolwork, (b) beliefs about themselves, (c) attitudes towards learning, achievement, and school, (d) study skills,and (e) reasons for learning. Also at a meta-level, intervention involves (a) educators' messages to students, (b) educators'expectations for students, (c), how learning is structured and paced, (d) feedback to students on their work, and (e) classroom goalsand assessment.

To enhance students' motivation and academic resilience, however, it is important to move beyond the meta-level to determine thespecific ways in which motivation and resilience are enacted in students' lives and in the classroom. This is where our model is able toassist. This model holds that educators are to do one or more of the following: keep high boosters high; keep low guzzlers low;increase low boosters; and reduce high guzzlers. I now describe ways that this can be done.

Keeping high boosters high and increasing low boosters

Self-beliefSelf-belief is perhaps the most critical booster to develop in students. It is one of the strongest predictors of achievementand enjoyment at school. Developing students' self-belief involves restructuring learning so as to maximise opportunities for success.Students' experience of success increases their self-belief. Ways to structure learning along these lines include breaking schoolworkinto components so that students can experience small successes along the way (thus building confidence and intrinsic motivation),perhaps individualising tasks so that challenges match students' capacities, and repositioning success in terms of personal bests andimprovement. To build students' self-belief, it is important to challenge their negative thinking. When harnessing principles of cognitivebehavioural therapy, it is desirable to encourage students to challenge their negative thinking through (a) observing their automatic

thoughts when they receive a mark or are assigned schoolwork, (b) looking for the evidence that challenges their negative thinkinghabits, and (c) challenging these thoughts with this evidence.

Value of schooling Underpinning students' value of schooling is the issue of relevance and meaning. Maximising the relevanceand meaning of school requires educators to link what is taught with world events, students' lives or interests, what they may do whenthey leave school, and perhaps what they learn in other school subjects. In doing this, students see the relevance, utility, andimportance of what they learn--this builds a value of schooling. Value of schooling is also developed by showing how school not onlyteaches students facts but also teaches them how to think and analyse and that these help them in many walks of life including theirsocial and personal lives, in the workplace, and on the sporting field. A value of schooling is enhanced when educators are rolemodels showing that they value what they are teaching.

Learning focus, persistence, planning and mon itoring, and s tudy management Motivation orientation theory providesguidance in promoting students' learning focus, persistence, planning and monitoring, and study management. From a motivation

orientation perspective, enhancing students' motivation in these respects essentially involves promoting a focus on mastery. Inpractical terms, this is achieved by showing students how effort and strategy are key means of improvement and accomplishment,encouraging students to set goals and showing them how to work towards these, making it clear to students how to break schoolworkinto components, plan how to do each component, how to review their progress, and overcome obstacles they may experience inworking towards their goals. In essence, these strategies encourage students to focus on the task at hand and this reduces cognitiveinterference in the form of concern (or fear) about how they are being evaluated or their performance relative to other students in theclass.

Keeping low guzzlers low and reducing high guzzlers

Low control A perception of low control over outcomes underpins maladaptive motivation in students' academic lives. Students whobelieve they have little control over maintaining success or avoiding failure are at risk of counterproductive manoeuvring in the form ofself-sabotage or even helplessness. Students develop a sense of control when they see the connection between their effort and

strategy and academic outcomes. Ways to build students' sense of control include showing them how hard work and effective studystrategies impact on achievement, reviewing study skills in class, and giving students some choice (within sensible parameters) overlesson objectives, assessment tasks, criteria for marking, and due dates for assignments. Other ways to build control involve providingfeedback in effective and consistent ways. This requires teachers to provide task-based feedback on students' work that makes it veryclear how they can improve. It also requires teachers to administer rewards (or punishment) that are directly contingent on whatstudents do--often inconsistent reward contingencies create confusion and uncertainty in students' minds as to what they did toreceive that reward.

Avoidance, sel f-sabotage, and anxiety Strategies to deal with avoidance, anxiety, and self-sabotage are underpinned by needachievement and self-worth motivation theories. These theories can be drawn upon to show students how to handle motivational gapsand sustain motivational strengths. The primary factor that underpins these three guzzlers is a fear of failure. To reduce theseguzzlers in students' lives, requires that students' fear of failure is investigated. Ways to do this include promoting a classroom climateof co-operation, self-improvement, and personal bests, showing that mistakes can be a springboard for success and do not reflect onstudents' worth as a person, and repositioning success so that it is seen more in terms of personal progress and improvement than

outperforming others. Reducing anxiety, avoidance, and self-sabotage is also achieved by enhancing students' control as discussedabove. Dealing with these guzzlers is essentially about assisting students towards success orientation and away from failureavoidance or failure acceptance. Doing this requires educators to build success into students' lives as much as is feasible. Two waysto do this are to rework the definition of success so that it encompasses improvement and personal progress (which is attainable byevery student) and to break tasks into smaller components to maximise opportunities for success along the way; a greater sense ofself-belief for the next task increases the l ikelihood that the student will meet with success on it.

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For which students is the motivation model relevant?

The motivation model developed here holds implications for students at different points on the academic spectrum. These includeunderachievers, disruptive students who have little interest in learning, highly anxious students or students constantly fearful of failure,at-risk students, students who may cheat, and even the highly motivated students who need to be sustained. From a cognitiveperspective, the underachiever needs to develop a greater sense of self-belief and perceived control while also developing motivatedbehaviours in the forms of persistence, planning and monitoring, and study management. Disruptive students can benefit from agreater value of schooling as well as an intrinsic orientation to schoolwork that is developed through a learning focus. These studentsmay also be disruptive for self-worth protection reasons (i.e. their disruption may be a form of self-sabotage) and so a fear of failureneeds to be faced. This also applies to the cheater who it seems would rather run the risk of being caught for cheating than risk failingand being seen to perform poorly. Students high in anxiety also need to work on fear of failure, reduce a possible avoidance

orientation, while developing a greater and more stable sense of self-belief. Anxiety also arises through an over-emphasis on how onecompares with others; and so a learning focus, a focus on the task at hand, and a model of personal bests (rather than being betterthan others) could assist these students. Although educators find themselves spending disproportionate amounts of time and energyon these more problematic students, it is important not to forget that the stronger students also need to be sustained and this modelprovides direction on how to do this through keeping high boosters high and low guzzlers low. It appears that this model applies to allstudents--the students in difficulty who need to be assisted, the motivated students who need to be sustained, and the majority who liesomewhere in between and who need some fine-tuning on particular dimensions.

Conclusion

It is desirable for students not only to be motivated to achieve to their potential but also better prepared to deal with academic setbackand pressure from a resilience perspective. It is well and good to have students that are motivated and achieve to their potential but,without academic resilience, these progressions are at risk of being undone in the face of setback, stress, or pressure in the school

setting.

Teaching for Resilience

Success experiences Identify academic areas in which students are educated along with, and in wayscomparable to, other learners.

Let students know you anticipate success; celebrate their successes. Allow students opportunities to take risks when requested; be careful not to put up "caution" signs. Highlight times when students do meet challenges and find success. Orient classroom tasks so that, as much as possible, the students' work can be perceived as being like that

of others, using the same materials and procedures as others use.

Particular areas of strength Ensure that students can participate with others, including being in extracurricularactivities.

Expect, and celebrate, surprises in finding strengths. Identify and celebrate outside-of-school strengths. Reward strengths appropriately. Don't build hopes for exaggerated rewards. Self-determination Be cautious about subtle and unintended comparisons to others' records and

achievements, particularly those of siblings.

Provide support when students attempt to show capabilities and interests in challenging areas. Distinctive turning points Celebrate successes when students succeed in challenges. Periodically review the students' histories with them; point out success records and evidence of progress.

Allow classmates to be aware of other's successes and provide reinforcement. Special friendships Help students seek friendships throughout the school and with students from a variety of

ability and skill levels.

Acknowledge students' friends; encourage their support. Acknowledgment of the Help students describe and reflect on the nature of their learning disabilities. Be one encouraging teacher. Be a student's champion. Be the teacher whom a student will remember favorably when asked, "Tell me about a teacher you

remember."

Adapted f rom A Demonst rat ion of Resil ience by MAURICE MILLER AND MARIE F. FRITZ 1998