An Academic Resilience Scale And Model For Malaysian Adolescents
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Date
2018-08
Authors
Seffetullah Kuldas
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
Despite their socioeconomically-disadvantaged backgrounds, which impede
academic achievements of the majority, some adolescents can academically succeed.
This exceptional achievement, defined as academic resilience, raises the question:
what and how individual, familial, and school factors enable some adolescent students
to perform the same task better than their peers from the same socioeconomic status
(low SES). To enhance understanding of this question and to explore factors
underlying academic resilience from the local sociocultural frame of reference, this
quantitative research integrated various theoretical and empirical literature into a
“Socio-Eco-Cultural-Transactional Framework of Academic Resilience”. Using this
framework, an academic resilience scale and model for Malaysian adolescents was
developed. Reliability and validity of the scale and model were tested and established
through pilot and main studies on academic resilience of adolescents with low SES in
a rural area of Kedah, Malaysia. The participants were randomly selected through a
venue-day-time sampling technique. Using FACTOR 10.7 version, a Minimum Rank
Factor Analysis of data collected from pilot study 2 (N = 308) and 4 (N = 127)
identified two interpersonal resources and two intrapersonal assets of academic
resilience. The resources appeared to be “perceived parental care” and “perceived
teacher care”, while the assets appeared “academic performance goal” and
“educational optimism”. A Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modelling (PLSSEM)
analysis, using SmartPLS 3.2.7 version, displayed that the intrapersonal assets
mediate the positive effect of interpersonal resources on grade point average (GPA) of academically-resilient adolescents participated in the main study (N = 190). As a
result, three significant findings could be highlighted. First, perceived parental care
appeared to be the best interpersonal resource that explains most of the positive
variance in both academic performance goal and educational optimism. Second,
perceived teacher care exerted the stronger influence on academic performance goal
than on educational optimism. Third, academic performance goal was the best
intrapersonal asset that explains most of the positive contribution to exam
performance. Based on these findings, the research has provided (a) a reliable and
valid scale for measuring academic resilience and (b) proposed a model for enhancing
the interpersonal resources and intrapersonal assets of non-resilient students among
adolescents in Malaysia. The model has implications for policymakers, school
administrators, school teachers, and parents by enhancing the understanding why some
students are academically resilient, while not their peers from the same SES, school,
and neighbourhood.
Description
Keywords
Academic achievement , Student-centered learning