The Association Between Academic Buoyancy And Academic Self-hindicapping In High School Student:The Mediating Role Of Fear Of Failure

Academic buoyancy refers to the individual’ s ability to successfully cope with daily academic setbacks,which is an important guarantee for students to achieve academic achievements and maintain mental health.High school is a critical point in the transition between nine years of compulsory education and higher education,and research related to academic buoyancy plays a key role in the future development of high school students.To protect their self-worth in the face of external expectations and increasingly stringent talent assessment standards,high school students may adopt academic self-handicapping strategies,i.e.,behaviors that presuppose barriers to personal achievement in order to provide excuses for possible failure,which can seriously affect their academic adaptive development.The development of academic self-hindicapping is closely related to academic buoyancy and fear of failure.Therefore,this study explored the effects of academic buoyancy on academic self-hindicapping in high school students and the mechanism of the role of fear of failure between the two.The specific study design was as follows:Study 1 examined the measurement performance of the Chinese version of the Academic Buoyancy Scale in a population of high school students using 1422 high school students in Jiangsu Province.Study 2examined the cross-sectional relationship between academic buoyancy and academic self-hindicapping and the mediating role of fear of failure by administering the scale to 3210 high school students in Guizhou Province and Jiangsu Province.Study 3 examined the longitudinal relationship between academic buoyancy and academic self-impediment and the longitudinal mediating role of fear of failure by administering three follow-up surveys to 880 high school students in Guizhou Province over a 6-month period.The findings of the study were as follows:(1)The academic buoyancy scale has good reliability and gender measurement equivalence in the Chinese high school student.(2)Academic buoyancy was significantly negatively related to fear of failure and academic self-hindicapping,and fear of failure was significantly positively related to academic self-hindicapping.Fear of failure partially mediated the effect of academic buoyancy on academic self-hindicapping.(3)T1 academic buoyancy significantly negatively predicted T2 fear of failure and T3 academic self-hindicapping,and T2 fear of failure significantly positively predicted T3 academic self-hindicapping.Fear of failure played a longitudinal mediating role between the relationship between academic buoyancy and academic self-hindicapping in high school students.In summary,the academic buoyancy scale has reliability in Chinese high school students.From the cross-sectional and longitudinal findings,it is clear that enhancing the academic buoyancy of high school students plays an important role in reducing their level of fear of failure and academic self-hindicapping and guiding them to develop good learning styles and attitudes.