Adaptability: How students’ responses to uncertainty and novelty predict their academic and non-academic outcomes.

Abstract

Adaptability is defined as appropriate cognitive, behavioral, and/or affective adjustment in the face of uncertainty and novelty. Building on prior measurement work demonstrating the psychometric properties of an adaptability construct, the present study investigates dispositional predictors (personality, implicit theories) of adaptability, and the role of adaptability in predicting academic (motivation, engagement, disengagement) and non-academic (self-esteem, life satisfaction, sense of meaning and purpose, emotional instability) outcomes. This longitudinal study (2 time points, 1 year apart), involving 969 adolescents from 9 high schools, found that personality (conscientiousness and agreeablenesspositively; neuroticism-negatively) and implicit theories (effort-related beliefs about intelligencepositively) significantly predicted adaptability (beyond the effects of socio-demographics and prior achievement). Further, adaptability significantly predicted academic (class participation, school enjoyment, and positive academic intentions-positively; self-handicapping and disengagement-negatively) and non-academic (self-esteem, life satisfaction, and sense of meaning and purpose-positively) outcomes beyond the effects of socio-demographic factors, prior achievement, personality, implicit theories, and 2 cognate correlates (buoyancy and self-regulation). These findings hold implications for researchers and practitioners seeking to understand and address young people's responses to their changing academic and non-academic worlds.

Structural and concurrent validity of the International English Mini-Markers in an adolescent sample: Exploring analytic approaches and implications for personality assessment

“…These results clearly support the importance of personality constructs in substantive educational research (e.g. Martin, Nejad, Colmar, & Liem, 2013;Martin, Papworth, Ginns, & Liem, 2014), particularly with regard to adaptive and maladaptive forms of motivation .…”

Adolescents’ autonomous functioning and implicit theories of ability as predictors of their school achievement and week-to-week study regulation and well-being

“…Relevant to the focus of our study, past research has indicated that students who favored incremental over entity beliefs have higher grades (Romero, Master, Paunesku, Dweck, & Gross, 2014), endorse more learning goals (Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007), use better reading strategies (Braasch, Braten, Stromso, & Anmarkrud, 2014), and practice more (Cury, Da Fonseca, Zahn, & Elliot, 2008). Conversely, entity beliefs have been linked with decreases in intrinsic motivation (Haimovitz, Wormington, & Corpus, 2011) and academic disengagement (Martin, Nejad, Colmar, & Liem, 2013).…”

The role of adaptability in promoting control and reducing failure dynamics: A mediation model

“…Recently, the concept of adaptability has been introduced and found to explain significant variance in academic and non-academic wellbeing, beyond the effects of factors such as buoyancy and selfregulation (Martin et al, 2013). The American Psychological Association (APA) defined adaptability as "the capacity to make appropriate responses to changed or changing situations; the ability to modify or adjust one's behavior in meeting different circumstances or different people" (VandenBos, 2007, p. 17).…”