The Causal Role of Family Communication Patterns in Academic Self-Efficacy and Academic Resilience

The scientific study of resilience dates back to the time when it was observed that a number of endangered children had a positive adaptation to their environment (Masten, 2001). These studies sought to find an answer to the question of how some children and young people can be successful and act well when their growth is threatened by factors such as poverty, abuse, war, violence and racism (Wright, Masten and Narayan, 2013). The researcher's eagerness to find an answer to this question has caused attention to resilience in many areas of research (Masten, 2014). According to Maesten (2014), resilience expresses the capacity of a dynamic system for successful adaptation with disturbances that threaten the performance, existence, or growth process of the system. Accordingly, people are considered to be resilience to positive results in spite of their compatibility with known threats (Cicchetti, 2010).
Resilience is a multi-dimensional structure that is affected by environmental issues (Werner and Smith, 1992; Connor and Davidson, 2003). Therefore, some researchers have tried to identify various aspects of the resilience in specific areas and fields (Sicchetti and Rogosch, 1997). Academic resilience is defined as the ability of a student to deal with academic failures and educational stresses (Martin & Marsh, 2003). Accordingly, students with high academic resilience do their homework better and are more skillfully (Finn and Rock, 1997).
There is no doubt that humans have a high capacity to tolerate hardships and adapt to changing conditions. But in order to take advantage of this capacity, they need some supportive resources (Southwick, 2014). Hence, family status has been considered a supportive factor (Wieders, 2014), and researchers such as Masten, Cutuli, Janette, Hinz, Obradovic, Wenzel (2014) emphasize the role of the family in relation to academic resilience.
A model is proposed by Fitzpatrich and Rithchie (1994) about how the family influences children’s expectations, beliefs, and ways of interacting with the world around them. This model, which reflects how parents communicate with their children (Huang, 2010), has two dimensions, namely, conversation orientation and conformity orientation. These dimensions determine how much family members talk about and express their thoughts and feelings.
In addition to family, another variable expected to be predictive of academic resilience is academic self-efficacy (Keye & Pidgeon, 2013). Self-efficacy is defined as one's belief in his abilities and competencies for the successful completion of a particular assignment (Bandura, 1977). Individuals who possess this feature believe that they can effectively deal with events and situations, and expect to be successful in overcoming obstacles, persevering in work, and often act at a high level. According to Bandura, Pastorelli, Barbaranelli and Caprara (1999), self-efficacy is a multi-dimensional variable and should be evaluated in different domains. Accordingly, they considered three areas of academic, emotional and social self-efficacy. According to Muris (2001), academic self-efficacy expresses a person's ability to learn about learning activities, encompasses curriculum subjects, and fulfills academic expectations. In line with these studies, some studies have also suggested predictive self-efficacy and academic self-efficacy by family communication patterns.
Hypothesis
1- Conformity orientation is a negative predictor and conversation orientation is a positive predictor of student's academic resilience.
2- Academic self-efficacy is a positive predictor of student's academic resilience.
3- Academic self-efficacy has a mediating role in the relationships between dimensions of family communication and academic resilience.
All first-grade high school students in Shiraz who enrolled in the academic year 2013-2014 were taken as the statistical population, of which 291 were selected through multistage cluster random sampling method. To collect the data, family communication patterns scale, Student’s Academic Self-efficacy questionnaire, and Academic Resilience Scale were used. To verify the validity and reliability of the instruments, the internal consistency and Cronbach's alpha coefficient were used, respectively. Using SPSS software, simultaneous multiple regression and Barron and Kenny method were conducted to examine the mediating role of academic self-efficacy.
Direct hypothesis examination indicated that: (1) the style conversation orientation was a positive predictor of academic resilience and academic self-efficacy (2) the conformity orientation was a negative predictor of academic self-efficacy (3) academic self-efficacy was a positive predictor of academic resilience. Indirect hypothesis examination indicated that conversation orientation has both a direct and indirect effect on academic resilience. However, conformity orientation only indirectly affects academic resilience. Calculation of the effect size of independent variables on dependent ones indicated that 27 percent of the changes in Academic Resilience, and 19 percent of the changes in Academic Self-Efficacy are explained by the proposed model.
Discussion and Investigating the mediating role of academic self-efficacy in the relationship of family communication patterns and academic resilience found that academic self–efficacy has a mediating role in the relationship between conversation orientation and academic resilience. This indicates that conversation orientation affects and increases academic resilience both directly and indirectly through the mediation of academic self-efficacy whereas conformity orientation cannot predict academic resilience. This finding demonstrates that families with conversation orientation bring up children with higher academic self-efficacy which correspondingly increases their academic resilience.
As a result, for increases academic self – efficacy and resilience in children it seems necessary that families accept the possible mistakes of children and create an open space for them to express their feelings and ideas and provide them with a warm and friendly environment for their emotional support.