Academic buoyancy and academic resilience: Exploring ‘everyday’ and ‘classic’ resilience in the face of academic adversity

TLDR

Academic buoyancy is the capacity to overcome everyday setbacks, while academic resilience is the capacity to overcome acute or chronic adversity that threatens educational development. The study investigates whether academic buoyancy and academic resilience are distinct yet correlated factors and whether buoyancy predicts low‑level negative outcomes whereas resilience predicts major negative outcomes. The authors surveyed 918 Australian high‑school students across nine schools to assess the distinctness and predictive relevance of buoyancy and resilience. Results showed buoyancy and resilience are distinct factors sharing about 35 % variance, with buoyancy more strongly predicting low‑level negative outcomes and resilience more strongly predicting major negative outcomes, the former’s effect on major outcomes being mediated by resilience.

Abstract

Academic buoyancy has been defined as a capacity to overcome setbacks, challenges, and difficulties that are part of everyday academic life. Academic resilience has been defined as a capacity to overcome acute and/or chronic adversity that is seen as a major threat to a student’s educational development. This study is the first to examine the extent to which (a) academic buoyancy and academic resilience are distinct (but correlated) factors, and (b) academic buoyancy is more relevant to low-level negative outcomes (anxiety, uncertain control, failure avoidance), whereas academic resilience is more relevant to major negative outcomes (self-handicapping, disengagement). The findings, based on 918 Australian high school students from nine schools, showed that academic buoyancy and academic resilience represented distinct factors sharing approximately 35% variance. Also, academic buoyancy was more salient in negatively predicting low-level negative outcomes whereas academic resilience was more salient in negatively predicting major negative outcomes. In supplementary analyses, the effect of academic buoyancy on low-level negative outcomes tended to be direct, whereas the effect of academic buoyancy on major negative outcomes was mediated by academic resilience. Implications for practice and research are discussed.