Comparing the Effectiveness of Self-Directed Learning Strategies and Brain-Based Learning on Academic Resilience in High School Students

Background &

: In general, among the effective methods in improving academic resilience, academic resilience, and emotional self-awareness can be mentioned as educational methods that include cognition, behavior, affection, and interactions at the same time. Resilience is a kind of returning to the initial balance or reaching a higher level of balance in threatening conditions and provides the means for successful adaptation in life. In the field of people's resilience, two categories of risk factors and protective factors can be separated, the risk factor prevents the effective performance of the individual. However, the protective factor is the resources that help people avoid the effects of looking at the importance of the family in hardships and crises. Resilience is not a one-dimensional structure, but a multi-dimensional phenomenon, it is understood in its context and context, and a complex interactive model is needed to fully understand it. On the other hand, in students, academic resilience means achieving good educational results despite adverse conditions and challenges through changing existing behaviors or creating new behaviors, such as discipline, practice, or planning. The resilience process is not just a biological or psychological fact. But at the same time, it also has social dimensions and nature. In other words, students who are resilient in one situation may face problems in another situation. Students who have academic resilience, even in the presence of stressful events and conditions that can put them at risk of poor performance and eventually dropping out of school, have high motivation and good performance. In other words, resilient students maintain a high level of motivation and progress despite stressful events and conditions, which requires the acquisition of appropriate self-awareness in different cognitive, behavioral, and even emotional fields. The purpose of this research was to compare the effectiveness of teaching self-directed learning strategies and brain-based learning on the academic resilience of high school students.

The research method was a semi-experimental pre-test-post-test type with an unequal control group. The statistical population of the current research is made up of all 387 female students of the first secondary school of the ninth grade of public schools in the city of Northern Swadkoh in the academic year of 2022-2023. A number of 45 people were selected based on the criteria for entering the research and were randomly replaced into two experimental groups of 15 people and a control group of 15 people. Samuels (2004) academic resilience questionnaire was used to collect data. The summary of self-directed learning strategies training sessions taken by Densero et al. (1979) in 8 60-minute sessions and the summary of brain-based learning training sessions taken by Cain et al. (2005) in 90-minute sessions were conducted on the experimental group. There was no intervention for the control group. Repeated measurement variance analysis was used with SPSS18 software to analyze the data.

The findings showed that teaching self-directed learning strategies and teaching brain-based learning affects the academic resilience of secondary school students. Brain-based learning training was more effective than brain-based learning training on academic resilience. The findings of this research can provide practical implications for consultants.

Brain-based learning helps students improve their cognitive skills. These skills include attention, memory, critical thinking, and problem-solving, which are effective in academic resilience and achieving better performance in various subjects. Teaching brain-based learning helps students strengthen their concentration power compared to teaching self-directed learning strategies. This focus helps students in learning and problem-solving and increases academic resilience. The limitation of the research to the first secondary school students of the ninth grade limits the generalization of its findings to other students and other grades, therefore caution should be observed in generalization. Since the gender of the participants was female, generalization to male students is limited. The data collection tool was a questionnaire, and questionnaires, despite their usefulness, may cause the respondents to respond under the influence of social desirability. Because the research was conducted in the northern city of Swadekoh, it may be limited in generalizing its results to other places due to the specific socio-cultural context of this city. The brain-based learning teaching method is an effective method for improving academic resilience, and the findings of this research can provide practical implications in the field of improving the performance of psychological factors to academic advisors and teachers using the brain-based learning teaching method. According to the results of the article, the hypothesis that there is a difference between the effectiveness of self-directed learning strategies and brain-based learning on academic resilience in high school students was confirmed. However brain-based learning training was more effective than self-directed learning strategies on academic resilience.