Role of Academic Emotions in the Relationship between Academic Achievement and Resilience among Eighth Graders

This study investigated the relationship among academic achievement, academic emotions, and resilience of grade eight students in Guiyang, China. Via a convenience sampling approach, 172 students (45.9% female) were recruited in this study. Students’ academic emotions and resilience were measured respectively by using the adolescent academic emotions questionnaire and Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale. Results indicated that positive high arousal academic emotions mediating the relationship between resilience and students’ academic achievement. However, there was no direct relationship among resilience, academic achievement and other academic emotions. Combining with the analysis of results and previous studies, ways to improve academic achievement with a healthy mental status were discussed. Role of Academic Emotions in the Relationship between Academic Achievement and Resilience It is a myth that adversity brings suffering and agony. Anguish is temporary, after surviving from the tough times, people can improve problem solving ability that benefit them all through their life. More specifically, after experiencing adverse events the ability to deal with troubles will be improved (Mcmillen, 1999). In order to assess this kind of ability, scientists developed a concept known as “resilience,” which is defined as the combination of an individual’s perseverance to fight despite repeated failures, their ability to recover and make a comeback, and their adaptive capacity and courage in the face of adversity (Xie & Kuo, 2019). In a nutshell, resilience is a positive and developmental adaptation result of individuals in highrisk environments. There is a Chinese saying, “Interest is the best teacher. ” This proverb means students who enjoy the content are more willing to learn, which is known as academic emotions. Academic emotions is the term to describe emotions that students experience in academic settings, which explain all kinds of psychological processes during learning (Pekrun, 2006; Pekrun, et al., 2002). Human emotions can be conceptualized within a two dimensional structure in which valence is the horizontal dimension and arousal is the vertical dimension (Russell, 2003; Citron et al., 2014). Valence is defined as the pleasant level of a stimulus; arousal means the activated degree of physiological responses (Van Volkinburg & Balsam, 2014). Considering the valence and arousal dimensions of emotion, academic emotions are subdivided into four categories: negative low arousal academic emotions, negative high arousal academic emotions, positive low arousal academic emotions, and positive high arousal academic emotions (Ravaja et al., 2004). Role of Academic Emotions 2 Academic emotions a Past studies (e.g. Jiang & Xu, 2017; Wang et al., 2017) have found that students’ resilience could predict academic emotions, and other research has proven academic emotions determined academic achievement of students. However, there are limited research studies specifically analyzing the effect of academic emotions on the relationship of resilience and academic achievement of Chinese students. The most relevant reference this study can find is a study examining the mediating effect of academic emotions on the relationship between school belonging and academic achievement of Macau adolescents (Lam et al., 2015). The limited reference leads to the purpose of this study to focus on whether there is a mediating effect among resilience, academic emotions, and academic achievement. Nowadays, schools and parents place excessive emphasis on students’ examination scores, which significantly increases students’ homework time, the amount of learning materials, and the number of tutorial classes (Song & Yang, 2014). By addressing the relationship among resilience, academic emotions, and academic achievement, this research can break the misconception that the only way to improve students’ academic achievement is through more practice and exams. It also inspires people to explore and discuss another deeper question: Is there a healthier method that increase students’ grades while achieving well-rounded education that ensures students a satisfied and successful school life in addition to extensive examinations and practices, a high-pressure learning environment, and tense curriculum arrangement? This research can provide ideas about this question regarding students’ resilience and academic emotions for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners who have the responsibility to adjust curriculum arrangement, modified educational policies, and design teacher training programs. In the current study, the major purpose is to focus on whether there is a mediating effect among resilience, academic emotions, and academic achievement. The mediation model hypothesis is shown in Figure 1. At the same time, this study will also try to find out how to improve resilience as well as whether positive academic emotions could be enhanced and negative academic emotions reduced. The primary research question of this study is: What is the role of the four academic emotions (i.e., positive high arousal (PHA), positive low arousal (PLA), negative high arousal (NHA), and negative low arousal (NLA) academic emotions) in the relationship between resilience and academic achievement respectively? Figure 1. Proposed model for the role of academic emotions (PHA, PLA, NHA, and NLA, respectively) between resilience and academic achievement. Research question: What is the role of the four academic emotions (i.e., PHA, PLA, NHA, and NLA academic emotions) in the relationship between resilience and academic achievement respectively?