Academic Resilience and the Four Cs: Confidence, Control, Composure, and Commitment

Academic resilience is defined as the ability to effectively deal with setback, stress or pressure in the academic setting. Although there is a large body of research focusing on general or life resilience, there has been little research into the issue of academic resilience. This paper utilises the Student Motivation Wheel (Martin, 2003a, 2003b) as a basis for conceptualising academic resilience and the Student Motivation Scale (SMS – Martin, 2001, 2002) as a basis for measuring it. The study found that academic resilience comprises selfbelief (confidence), a sense of control, low anxiety (composure), and persistence (commitment) as assessed through administration of the SMS (that measures each of these four dimensions) to 400 Australian high school students. Implications for pedagogy are discussed. Resilience Why are some (often motivated) students debilitated by setbacks, poor performance, stress, and study pressure while others pick themselves up, recover, and move on? Why do some students get caught in a downward spiral of underachievement while others respond proactively to poor performance and break this downward spiral? Why do some student