Samuela Mouzaoir

School: The University of Chicago

Major: Psychology

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-skjv-z318

Samuela graduated in 2020 from the University of Chicago with majors in Psychology and Comparative Human Development, and a minor in Education & Society. She is passionate about equity in education, and will pursue a PhD in Educational Psychology from Michigan State University in the fall. In the future, she hopes to work with communities, teachers, and students in undeserved communities to identify and implement methods of changing education for the better.

Academic Buoyancy in Conceptually Difficult Math Learning: Exploring Students’ Self-Disclosed Emotions, Beliefs, and Perceptions

Abstract

Academic Buoyancy (AB) is defined as a student’s ability to achieve favorable outcomes despite everyday academic stressors, such as poor performance on an assessment or receiving negative feedback. The study of AB is critical given that it has been shown to effectively mediate the effects of academic stress. While some measures of AB exist, none have incorporated student narratives as a means of identifying patterns of AB in classroom settings. Additionally, little research has been conducted into the specific cognitive and affective mechanisms that underlie AB, such as goal orientation (student motivation to perform well).  Here, we analyzed the expressive writing samples, defined as self-disclosed narratives outlining students’ feelings prior to a stressful mathematics assessment, of 10-12 year-olds (n=161). We developed a novel expressive writing-based scale which identified patterns of buoyant thinking and goal orientation within the narratives, calling it the Expressive Writing Academic Buoyancy Scale (EWABS). We validated the EWABS against students’ self-reported goal orientations, anxiety, perceptions of ability (self-concept) and perceptions of outcome (self-efficacy). We also  sought to understand how categories in the EWABS impacted students’ learnings. Our subgroup analyses allowed us to study who is learning, who isn’t, and why. When taken as a whole, measures included in our survey did not seem to predict students’ learning gains, and there was no relationship between the EWABS and self-reported goal orientation. However, subgroup analyses revealed interesting and highly variable patterns, suggesting that AB operates differently for students, according to their gender and baseline performance on a pre-test.