First discovered by Australian academics Andrew Martin and Herbert W. Marsh in 2008, ‘academic buoyancy’ refers to the ability of students to successfully deal with the everyday academic stresses of school life, such as failing a subject, missing an assignment deadline, catching up after an absence from school, or an unexpected change of teacher.
Students who are academically buoyant are able to successfully handle normal day-to-day academic challenges, difficulties and setbacks. They also demonstrate higher levels of motivation, engagement, wellbeing, and achievement. Academic buoyancy, also called ‘everyday academic resilience’, is acknowledged as a key component of a student’s capacity to thrive and prosper at school and beyond.
However other studies, including those undertaken by Andrew Martin and Rebecca Collie of the University of New South Wales, have revealed that female school students are significantly less academically buoyant than male students. In fact, this is one of the relatively few areas in which gender differences at school are not in favour of girls.
The inability to be academically buoyant can result in students failing to reach their full potential, which may have significant long-term implications for educational and personal outcomes. Martin and Marsh’s ground-breaking 2008 study found that anxiety explained much of the variance in academic buoyancy that they observed. Indeed, multiple later studies have confirmed that feelings of anxiety, lack of control, worry, tension and academic fear predict lower academic buoyancy.
Furthermore, Martin and Marsh’s later research, published in 2020, found that while being academically buoyant predicts lower academic adversity, experiencing academic adversity does not predict higher buoyancy. Some experience of academic adversity can have positive effects, but this is more likely when a student already possesses high levels of academic buoyancy. This is an important finding, they write, because it demonstrates that “academic buoyancy is not the outcome of exposure to adversity”. Instead, buoyancy is a distinct attribute which buffers students from the effects of academic setbacks. This runs counter to ‘inoculation’ theories which hold that exposing students to moderate levels of academic adversity will result in increased academic resilience.
Ros Curtis
References
Collie, R.J., Martin, A.J., Malmberg, L.-E., Hall, J., & Ginns, P. (2015). Academic buoyancy, student achievement, and the linking role of control: A cross-lagged analysis of high school students. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 85, 113-130. DOI: 10.1111/bjep.12066
Martin, A.J., & Marsh, H.W. (2008). Academic buoyancy: Towards an understanding of students’ everyday academic resilience. Journal of School Psychology, 46(1), 53–83. DOI: 10.1016/j.jsp.2007.01.002
Martin, A.J., & Marsh, H.W. (2020). Investigating the reciprocal relations between academic buoyancy and academic adversity: Evidence for the protective role of academic buoyancy in reducing academic adversity over time. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 44(4), 301-312. DOI: 10.1177/0165025419885027 [open access]