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Abstract
Due to the demands of today’s achievement-driven educational environment, increased attention is now being given to students’ mental health. Specific areas of inquiry include students’ perceptions of internal dialogue and its effect on daily academic and nonacademic activities. Educational research suggests that self-talk, resiliency, and social environment affect student achievement and perceptions of learning environments. Investigating students’ internal dialogue may better inform teaching practices aligned to improved health and wellness in the music classroom. Self-talk is a person’s inner dialogue, examined in the context of valence, motivation, and/or instruction. Resilience is the ability to overcome adversity, and in educational contexts, refers to students’ abilities to overcome challenges despite adverse educational, social, psychological, and societal barriers. Classroom social environments include both academic and social considerations toward student learning and relationships with peers and teachers.
The purpose of this study was to examine students’ perceptions of self-talk, resilience, and social environment in the context of secondary-level instrumental music performance classrooms. The questions guiding this study include:
1. What are the psychometric qualities (i.e., validity, reliability, and fairness) of the self-talk, resiliency, and social learning environment scales used in this study?
2. What relationships exist between the constructs and domains of self-talk, resiliency, and social learning environment in the context of secondary-level music teaching and learning?
3. What interaction effects exist between resiliency, social environment, and sex-type and how do they explain variability in self-talk?
4. What size of Differential Item Functioning (DIF) effect exist for items when used to measure subgroups of students based on their sex-type?
Secondary-level instrumental music students (N = 402) enrolled in United States middle and high schools responded to a 69-item Likert-type rating scale embedded within the three constructs: Self-talk, Resilience, and Social Environment. Measures of each construct were validated using modern measurement theory. Several strong positive relationships were identified between the constructs and embedded domains. Interaction effects between resiliency, social learning environment, and sex-type were identified, suggesting that variability in students’ self-talk is explained by both resiliency and social environment as conditioned by sex-type. Implications toward students’ music performance achievement, motivation, and developmental needs are discussed.