A new study has revealed that teenagers who are better able to overcome setbacks are more likely to get higher grades than those who are less “academically buoyant”.
Professor Dave Putwain, who is the lead author of this latest study, follows his previous research which found that pupils who worry about their exam performance are more likely to be badly than those who are less anxious.
The study, Academically buoyant students are less anxious about and perform better in high-stakes examinations, which was published in the Journal of Educational Psychology, is the first to chart a link between performance in exams – so-called test anxiety - and academic assurance.
A total of 705 students in their final year of secondary education (Year 11) participated in the study, which required them to self-report data for test anxiety and academic buoyancy. Academic buoyancy is a student’s capacity to successfully overcome setback and challenge that is typical of the ordinary course of everyday academic life.
Examination performance was taken from the mean English, mathematics and science scores from the high-stakes GCSE exams taken at the end of Year 11.
The study results showed that academic buoyancy protects pupils against viewing exams as threatening by influencing self-regulative processes, and so enables better examination performance.
In turn, worry has a negative effect on academic buoyancy. Tension felt by pupils was also measured, however this did not appear to affect academic buoyancy.
Professor Putwain said: “Academic buoyancy protects against the appraisal of examinations as threatening by influencing self-regulative processes and enables better examination performance. Worry, but not tension, shows a negative feedback loop to academic buoyancy.”
The findings from this research offers useful insights into how to best design and evaluate interventions designed to reduce test anxiety or improve academic buoyancy and examination performance.
