Student resilience plays a pivotal role in both student satisfaction and academic performance (Mahmoud, et al., 2012).  Educators are increasingly met with students who seem to be poorly equipped to deal with setbacks, and see feedback as a personal critique, not a critique of the work they have produced (Gray, 2015).  This seems to create a barrier for students to take on board the feedback given.

ERiP plans

The School of Psychology’s Educational Research in Psychology (ERiP) group is launching a number of projects looking at addressing this issue, one project will explore the potential of self-affirmation as a means to boost resilience when receiving feedback.

Self-affirmation theory

Students’ academic capabilities are a key component of their self-concept (Baumeister, 1999), even more so for the large proportion of our undergraduates who arrive as straight A students.  Therefore, when students’ marks and feedback at university deviate from this, a central aspect of their self-concept is threatened.

Self-affirmation theory (Steele, 1988) proposes that people are attentive to threats to their sense of competence and process information defensively when they experience a threat to that personal value (Cohen & Sherman, 2014).  This may explain why some students down play the accuracy of the feedback they receive.  However, affirming an important, unrelated aspect of the self has been shown to reduce resistance and enhance the uptake of subsequent recommendations.

Self-affirmation has been shown to increase the performance of women in male dominated disciplines such as physics (Miyake, et al., 2010). It has reduced the racial achievement gap amongst Black and White students by 40% (Cohen et al., 2006). Koole, et al., (1999) also demonstrated that self-affirmation can reduce ruminative thoughts following failure feedback.

For more information please contact amy.fielden@ncl.ac.uk.