The relation between pre-service music teachers' psychological resilience and academic achievement levels

This study aims to examine the relation between pre-service music teachers' psychological resilience and academic achievement levels and to determine what variables influence their psychological resilience levels. The study sample consisted of students enrolled in a music education program in the 2013-2014 academic year (N=333). In respect with the study objective; the psychological resilience levels of students were evaluated using the Psychological Resilience Scale for Adults created by Fribog et al. (2005) and translated into Turkish by Basım and Çetin (2010). Students' demographic characteristics and academic achievement levels were assessed using the Personal Information Form developed by the author. The author conducted the data analysis with the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient, one-way ANOVA and independent sample t test. The study results indicated that the psychological resilience levels of pre-service music teachers were high. Additionally, a significant positive relationship was found between their psychological resilience and academic achievement levels. In terms of the gender variable and total scores on psychological resilience, a statistically significant difference was found between the men and women, where more favorable responses were given by the latter in their perception of self, perception of the future and social resources subdimensions. No statistically significant difference was found according to graduation type and class level variables.


INTRODUCTION
Individuals respond differently to the difficult conditions they experience throughout their lives. Some may develop negative attitudes toward negative living conditions while others may develop positive attitudes and have a successful adjustment process. In this respect, psychological resilience has become a topic of interest for positive psychology in recent years. Many studies on psychological resilience have been conducted in Turkey; however, different names have been variously applied to the concept. For instance, Gizir and Aydın (2006) preferred to use the term "psychological durance", Terzi (2008b) used "the power to pull oneself together" and E-mail: tubayokus@mu.edu.tr; Tel: +90 2522111000-5523.
Authors agree that this article remain permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License Gürgan (2014) used "struggle." For the present study, the author chose to use the term "resilience". Resilience is generally defined as success despite changing or threatening conditions and the process of adapting oneself to the changing environment (Cicchetti and Cohen, 1995;Hunter, 2001;Masten et al., 1990). Numerous studies, however suggest that resilience is an influential factor in coping with psychiatric illnesses, such as stress, trauma and depression (Connor and Davidson, 2003;Hjemdal et al., 2007;Kobasa et al., 1982;Kosaka, 1996;Terzi, 2008a;Urgan, 2008;Wallace et al., 2001;). Weak resilience increases stress, anxiety and depression and thereby reduces performance (Palmer, 2013).
Alternatively viewed, resilience is the capability of dealing with problems during a crisis or the development of specific responses to complicated social problems and changing conditions (Hutter and Kuhlicke, 2013). In this way, a person's experiences result in adaptational and developmental outcomes (Schaffer, 2006). According to Basım and Çetin (2010), protective factors, mechanisms and processes that have positive influences on desirable outcomes are accepted as resilience. The outcomes of resilience include good state of mental health, functional capability and social competence (Olsson et al., 2003). Connor and Davidson (2003) developed the following various descriptions of resilience: 1) being capable of adapting oneself to changes, 2) building close and trusting relationships, 3) seeing the humorous side of circumstances or conditions, 4) struggling for the best regardless of what happens, 5) working to reach the goals, 6) being proud of achievements, 7) knowing when and where to ask for help, 8) focusing and thinking clearly under pressure, 9) considering oneself as a strong personality.
From the developmental approach, resilience includes the competence to use protective factors to perform developmental tasks appropriate to the person's age (Kaplan, 1999). In the relevant literature, the protective factors are described as optimism, empathy, and selfrespect, direction or mission, decisiveness and determination (Ungar, 2004). Protective factors are the positive factors in individuals' lives, as well as factors that predict positive results for their families and communities (Masten and Reed, 2002). On the other hand, Werner (1995) asserts that preschoolers who have psychological resilience develop a coping model by combining their autonomy and the ability to ask for help when they need it. These characteristics are the anticipations of the psychological resilience they will depend on for the rest of their lives. Bernard (2004) describes resilience as the durability and competences that are related with a person's success in life. In this respect, resilience can be described as the process by which a person uses protective factors to adapt themselves to the risk factors involved in different living conditions or events (negative conditions) that they experience during their developmental processes.
In education, the key indicators of psychological resilience are being able to cope with learning difficulties, having a relatively high tolerance for disappointment and avoiding problems and disappointments in the learning process (Carr and Claxton, 2002). Alternatively, Hammond (2004) conducted a study on the influence of learning on psychological and mental health and durability, where he suggested that lifelong learning was influential in coping with potential stress and that learning affected psychological qualities such as self-respect, selfefficacy and the sense of goal and hope. In terms of educational environment, resilience is discovering and determining the protect tive factors that exist in the school environment and in the society (Boorn, Dunn, and Page, 2010). The concept of resilience was first included in educational activities in the 1990s, when programs and strategic activities focusing on the improvement of psychological durability of students became more important (Price et al., 2012). For instance, Arastaman and Balci (2013) found that problem solving skills functioned as a factor that developed psychological durability and that it was an important component of resilience. Moreover, this study found that grade point average (GPA) and truancy were important demographical data that helped predict students' resilience. Robinson (2000) developed a description of resilience factors capable of being adjusted to educational environments, namely 1) Sense of belonging or loyalty to school/institution, 2) Positive assessments and achievement at school/in the educational environment, 3) Having somebody that believes in you, 4) Being in a positive relationship with an adult other than a family member, 5) Having a special skill or talent. The factors that increase resilience are important for educators, as these factors have an impact on effective teaching and learning (Thornton et al., 2006).
A review of the relevant literature shows that many researchers agree on the three factors comprising resilience, namely, 1) Personal predispositions, 2) Family cohesion, 3) Social resources outside the family (Ex: Garmezy, 1993;Werner, 1989, 1993: cited by Hjemdal et al., 2011Wallace et al., 2001). The sources of personal disposition include structural flexibility, sociability or showing initiative, intelligence, communicative skills and personal characteristics; the sources of family cohesion include supportive familial traits that require certain behavioral characteristics, such as warmth, courage and assistance; and the sources of the social resources outside the family include socio-economic status, school experiences and supporting communities (Olsson et al., 2003). Furthermore, in the study conducted by Huang and Lin (2013) that assessed university students' resilience, they found it to be a personal trait, involving an individuals' capability of dealing with the difficulties they faced. They described it as a four-factor structure that included 1) empathy and the interaction between persons, 2) cognitive maturity, 3) problem solving and 4) hope and optimism. The resilience factors included in this study's context feature a six factor structure that comprises all dimensions of resilience within the framework of the scale created by Friborg et al. (2005) and Basım and Çetin (2010), which aimed at evaluating adults' resilience by taking environmental conditions into consideration. These factors include 1) Perception of the self, 2) Perception of future, 3) Structural style, 4) Social competence, 5) Family cohesion and 6) Social resources.
It is clear that resilience includes many factors and has a multi-dimensional structure. Although numerous recent studies have aimed to reveal, assess and examine resiliency's correlations with different factors (Ex: Gürgan, 2014;Huang and Lin, 2013;Olsson et al., 2003;Terzi, 2008a;Terzi 2008b), there are few studies within the national or international literature that research the resilience of pre-service music teachers. In Turkey, music education falls under the branch of art education within the framework of the music teaching undergraduate program, and pre-service music teachers who are trained in music education, are expected to acquire an understanding of the full musical spectrum (e.g. instruments, vocals and music repertoire, to name a few). In this process, pre-service music teachers may develop various attitudes and adjustment processes against different risk factors they might encounter in their educational environment; those that are capable of coping with these risk factors and are able to subsequently develop different protective factors are then empowered to demonstrate a higher rate of development and better achievement. In other words, resilience is an important factor in the matriculation of pre service music teachers insofar as it will enable them to positively respond to the negative conditions they might face during their undergraduate education and thereby stand a stronger chance of academic achievement.
For these reasons, this study aims to identify the correlations between pre-service music teachers' psychological resilience and their academic achievement levels and analyze their psychological resilience levels using different variables. In this respect, the following research questions were formulated: 1. What is the resilience level of pre service music teachers? 2. Does the resilience level of pre service music teachers vary according to gender, type of school they graduated from and class level? 3. Is there a statistically significant correlation between the resilience level of pre service music teachers and academic achievement levels?

Research model
The study was designed as a descriptive study and a survey. A survey includes describing the characteristics of a specific group using different tools, such as questionnaires and tests. This is a Yokus 1963 descriptive and correlational study. Descriptive studies describe a given situation as precisely and carefully as possible. Correlational studies analyze the correlation between two or more variables without interfering with these variables (Büyüköztürk et al., 2009).

Data collection tools
The data were collected using the Resilience Scale for Adults (RSA) created by Friborg et al., (2005) and translated into Turkish by Basım and Çetin (2010) and a personal information form. The personal information form was created by the author in order to collect information about the demographic characteristics of the participant students. This form consisted of questions about the university the students were enrolled in, their gender, the type of the high school they had graduated from, and current class and academic achievement levels.
The author placed negative and positive statements on different sides to mitigate the possibility of the participants making prejudgements when selecting choices among items; the author also used five separate boxes placed in a diagram for the answers. In this study, the answer boxes were placed from the left to the right in 1-2-3-4-5 Likert type. In this respect, the scores obtained from this scale increased in direct proportion with the resilience levels of the pre service music teachers. The minimum possible score on the scale is 33 while the maximum possible score is 165.

Data analysis
The data were analyzed using the SPSS (Version 15.0) program. The demographic data of the pre service teachers were evaluated with frequencies and percentages; an independent samples t-test was conducted to determine any statistical significance according to gender and the type of the high school the pre service teachers graduated from, in terms of the sub-dimensions of RSA and the total score; a one-way ANOVA was conducted to determine any significant differences in terms of class variable and the total score; and lastly, the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was used to find the correlation between resilience and academic achievement levels.
The arithmetic means and standard deviations were calculated for each sub-dimension in the scale and the total in order to ensure a more reliable and accurate interpretation of the data. Based on these arithmetic means, the score limits of each level in this 5-point Likert type scale were identified. Assuming that the intervals in the scale are equal to each other, the range of scores were formed in the following manner: between 1-1.80 is "very low", between 1.81-2.60 is "low", between 2.61-3.40 is "intermediate", between 3.41-4.20 is "high", between 4.21-5 is "very high".

FINDINGS
Arithmetic means and standard deviations of students' resilience levels are shown in Table 1.
As Table 1 illustrates, the arithmetic mean of the pre service music teachers' total resilience scores is Χ =3.78. This result indicates that the total resilience level of participants is "high". Additionally, it was found that pre service music teachers had "high" resilience levels in the perception of self ( Χ =3.52), perception of future ( Χ =3.79), structural style ( Χ =4.10) and social competence ( Χ =3.76) sub-dimensions, while they had "very high" resilience levels in the family cohesion ( Χ =4.54) and social resources ( Χ =4.46) sub-dimensions.
As Table 2 shows, there is a significant difference by gender in the pre service music teachers' perception of self [t (331) Female participants' resilience scores in perception of self ( X ഥ = 21.64), perception of future (X ഥ = 15.46), structural style (X ഥ = 16.94), social resources (X ഥ = 27.43) sub-dimensions and total resilience scores (X ഥ = 21.45) are higher than male participants' scores in perception of the self (X ഥ = 20.37), perception of future (X ഥ = 14.71), structural style (X ഥ = 15.60), social resources (X ഥ = 25.78) sub-dimensions and in total resilience score ( X ഥ = 20.48). These findings show a statistically significant difference between total resilience and gender, to the benefit of females.
As Table 3 indicates, there is no significant difference by graduation variable according to independent samples t-test results. Resilience levels of male and female students in sub-dimensions and total resilience showed no difference either.
As Table 4 indicates, pre service music teachers' resilience levels are not significantly different from each other in subdimensions and in total resilience based on one-way ANOVA results. An analysis of Table 5 shows that there is a positive and statistically significant correlation between "resilience and academic achievement" scores (p<.01). In this respect, there is a significant and moderately positive correlation between pre service music teachers' total resilience score (r= .473; p<.01) and the subdimensions of resilience, namely, perception of self (r= .386; p<.01), perception of future (r= .355; p<.01), structural style (r= .424; p<.01), social competence (r= .345; p<.01), family cohesion (r= .394; p<.01), social resources (r= .394; p<.01) and academic achievement scores. In conclusion, the students' resilience and academic achievement levels mutually influence each other.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
During the course of university education, many students experience psychological problems as they are trying to develop new skills and are receiving an advanced level of training. The university environment is usually stressful and students encounter various risk factors. Compared to high school, there is a minimum level of academic support at university, academic members and counselors are more distant from students than they are at high school and moreover, entering into a new environment can potentially lead to the students becoming isolated and alienated (Kadison and DiGeronimo, 2004). Hartley (2010) expanded on these risk factors adding the experience of: 1) temporary cognitive disorders 2) low academic confidence and 3) conflicts with peers. Relevant studies have shown that resilience is an important element that helps in the students' struggle against these risk factors.
In the relevant literature, there are many studies of university students' psychological resilience (PR) and the correlations between PR and a variety of factors. A study by Terzi (2008a) found that there was a significant relationship between PR and perceived social support. Terzi (2008b) also did a study on the correlation between university students' ability to pull themselves together and their internal protective factors. This study found that there were positively significant correlations between students' ability to put themselves together and their optimism, self-efficacy, problem-solving and coping strategy scores. There is a study in the international literature by Sills et al. (2006), who found a negative correlation between PR and neuroticism and a positive   correlated with social perfectionism, depression and anxiety.
The results of this study revealed that pre-service music teachers studying in music pedagogy programs had high levels of PR ( =124.7). This shows that preservice music teachers are successful at coping with potential stressors during their undergraduate education or they have the ability to adapt rapidly to stressful experiences. Additionally, the study results showed that there was a significant correlation between pre-service music teachers' PR and their academic achievement (p<0.01), which is in accordance with the studies mentioned above.
A majority of social and psychological studies claim that gender is a critical factor in determining the resilience and vulnerability of individuals. Reimer (2002) argues that gender is correlated with stress, coping and PR in early adulthood. However, females are more prone to depression than males in mid-adolescence and adulthood (Culbertson, 1997;Conger et al., 2001;Nolen-Hoeksema and Joan, 1994). This study determined that female music students' PR levels were significantly higher, as well as their scores on self-perception, perception of the future, structural style and social resources sub-factors. Some studies in the literature (Arastaman and Balci, 2013;Arokiaraj and Shahrazad, 2011;Terzi, 2008b) have found that PR did not vary significantly by gender, which is not consistent with the results of this study. However, there are also relevant studies which are consistent with this study. For instance, Werner and Smith (2001) found a significant difference in social and interpersonal resources in favor of females. In another study, Friborg et al. (2003) found a significant difference in the social support dimension of PR in favor of females. Thornton et al. (2006) conducted a study with high school students and found that male students' PR levels were lower than those of the females, which is similar to the results of this study. Another study by Hjemdal (2011) found no significant difference between males' and females' total PR scores. However, they found significant differences in the social resources and family harmony dimensions in favor of females. This study also supports the idea that females are more successful at coping with psychological difficulties than males. The study also searched for differences in PRs due to type of high school and year of study, but found none (See Tables 3 and 4). Thus, the high school type and year of study variables had no effect on pre-service music teachers' PRs. Arastaman and Balci (2013) conducted a study of the correlation between high school students' PR levels and certain protective factors and, like this study, found that grade had no influence on PR.
There is a significant and moderately positive relation between pre service music teachers' resilience and academic achievement levels in total and sub-dimension scores. Based on this result, it appears that resilience of students is influential on their academic achievement or vice versa. Johns (2005) found a significant relation between students' academic achievement and resilience levels. Additionally, Arastaman and Balci (2013) determined a significant relation between high school students' gpa and resilience levels. Thornton et al. (2006) however conducted a study on high school students and found no significant relation between achievement and resilience. This study's result is in accordance with the results of the studies by Johns (2005) and Arastaman and Balci (2013).
Taking the relation between resilience and academic achievement into consideration, these results suggest that alternative approaches be created to increase or support resilience in pre service music teachers. The relevant literature also offers suggestions about increasing resilience. For instance, Hartley (2010) argues that assistance training programs should be organized to improve students' awareness about how to use the protective factors to increase resilience and to inform them about the risk factors that weaken resilience. Assistance training programs include career planning, continuing education and social support and research services (Mowbray et al., 2005). Assistance training programs have been proven to improve confidence and perception of self, to help individuals cope with psychiatric illnesses and to increase the number of people who attend university after completing high school (Collins and Mowbray, 2005). In another study, Robinson (2000) suggested these positive trainings to help build resilience: 1. See any kind of interaction as an opportunity 2. Make a friendly, sincere, open and soft approach 3. Listen and provide positive feedback to young persons 4. Approve of and respect young persons while giving feedback to them, discuss sensitive issues, make efforts to understand them 5. Create a positive framework 6. Have respect for young persons' life experiences and inner views 7. Be fair and consistent in educational environments If Robinson's suggestions were to be taken into consideration in music education environments, they would facilitate the building up and support of resilience levels in pre service music teachers.
In addition, Terzi (2005) conducted a study on education faculty students about the protective factors that support university students' resilience. He found that resilience, as a personal characteristic, had an indirect influence on being in a good state via cognitive assessment and coping. Moreover, he showed that individuals with a high level of resilience used effective coping strategies when they encounter stressful circumstances. In another study by Aydoğdu (2013), it was found that individuals with resilience used problem-focused coping strategies in stressful situations. Based on these results, it is suggested that pre service music teachers receive guidance about stress factors or negative situations they might encounter during their university lives; assistance should also be provided to help them develop coping strategies to use as protective factors for fostering resilience.