How to Help Students Achieve in Assessment Tasks

Today and yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the 2015 Assessment in Schools Conference at UNSW Global in Sydney. One of the key sessions that had an impact on me was Professor Andrew Martin's work on Personal Proficiency and how we can 'optimise' the academic potential of students.

Within the first five minutes of Professor Martin's seminar I felt like a great cloud in my head had been dispersed. Since becoming a teacher I've becoming very familiar with the word 'resilience'. Not in the sense that I'm expert on it, simply in the sense that I hear about it nearly every day.

"Davey McHuddlestein is a really resilient student"

"That Rita Wong has no resilience"

"I wish I was a bit more resilient whenever I hear the music of Nickleback"

It got to the point where I was hearing the word so much that it had lost all meaning. During a recent Year 10 unit on Jasper Jones we did some work around the idea of resilience but, I must admit, I let the students lead on this theme because I didn't have much to say about it. 

Professor Martin's work around optimising potential involved a framework on the personal proficiency of students that struck a beam of clarity into my overcast brain. Resilience wasn't quite what I thought it was.

He asserts, as a research psychologist and educator, that there are three major variable traits within students that regulate the way they react to external factors. By extension, this no doubt applies to non-students too. They are:

1. Buoyancy

2. Resilience

3. Adaptability

Martin states that buoyancy (or academic buoyancy) is a student's ability to deal with every day adversity - the deadlines, the poor marks, the criticism, a fight with friends or at home, etc. This is interesting because these are sorts of things often heard bandied about in connection to the 'R' word. 

Resilience on the other hand, as Martin says, "was born on the street, in poverty". This is a person's ability to deal with chronic or acute adversity... things like poverty, disability, suspensions, chronic under-achievement, poor mental health, learning, repeating a grade, etc. Heavy stuff. Martin is very emphatic in separating resilience from buoyancy. Resilience is not a student's ability to deal with every day adversity.

The third of these factors, adaptability, is someone's ability to deal with change and disruptions to routine. Things that aren't really forms of adversity but can still throw a spanner in the metaphorical works.  Some people can deal with change well, some can't.

These traits are only the smallest fraction of what Professor Martin spoke about today - he also talked in detail about adopting a multi-dimensional approach to boosting academic growth, and the various factors that impede student motivation. 

One more thing that I will mention, however, is the Five Cs of Academic Buoyancy, which Martin listed as observed elements for good academic buoyancy. These are, in no particular order:

Confidence

Coordinartion

Commitment

Composure

Control

If students can maintain these then they should have no problem 'bouncing back' from every day adversity (which is the majority of what they'll actually face in a regular school environment, as opposed to chronic or acute adversity). For non-teachers reading this, all of this stuff is just as relevant for our own lives if we want to find any kind of success. 

It makes perfect sense to me in hindsight. I guess this is the epitome of one of those moments where a light switches on in your head, where a great educator like Professor Andrew Martin illuminates something for you.   

Click here for more information about Professor Martin and his research.