Abstract

• The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the social problem-solving skills and academic hardiness of student teachers. Quantitative and survey research design was used in this study. A total of 1000 student teachers in Yangon University of Education participated. Social Problem-Solving Inventory–Revised; Short Form (SPSI-R;SF) developed by D’Zurilla et al. (2002) and Revised Academic Hardiness Scale (RAHS) developed by Benishek et al. (2005) were used to measure social problem-solving skills and academic hardiness of student teachers. According to this study, there were statistically significant differences in social problem-solving skills and its subscales by gender. There were statistically significant differences in constructive and overall social problem-solving skills by education level except dysfunctional problem-solving skills. Concerned with academic hardiness, significant differences were found in commitment and challenge by gender. Significant differences were found in commitment, control and total academic hardiness by education level. Results of Pearson product moment correlation indicated that academic hardiness was significantly positively correlated with constructive problem-solving skills and overall social problem-solving skills of student teachers whereas academic hardiness was found to be significantly negatively correlated with dysfunctional problem-solving skills. Regression analysis revealed that approximately 27% of the variance in academic hardiness could be explained by constructive problem-solving skills and dysfunctional problem-solving skills. So, student teachers with high social problem-solving skills may be more likely to perform well socially and academically regardless of situations. This study found that social problem-solving skills of student teachers can affect their academic hardiness to some extent.