Systematic review of protective factors related to academic resilience in children and adolescents: unpacking the interplay of operationalization, data, and research method

Identifying protective factors that promote academic resilience is vital. Nevertheless, due to the variations in the operationalizations of academic resilience, timeframes, data sources, and employed research methods, it remains unclear whether the impact of protective factors identified across studies can be attributed to the factors themselves or to these variations. By addressing these uncertainties, this study aims to provide an overview of the protective factors that have been extensively investigated in academic resilience and their degree of influence. A literature search found 119 empirical studies on protective factors in education settings for children and adolescents. The review analyzed five protective factors groups (individual, family, school, peer, community), three operationalizations of academic resilience (simultaneous, progressive, instrumental), two timeframes (longitudinal, non-longitudinal), three data sources (self-collected, national/local assessments, international large-scale assessments), and commonly employed research methods. The studies analyzed in this review yielded mixed results regarding the impact of the examined protective factors, with measurement instruments and statistical power playing a significant role in explaining the variations. Individual and school-level characteristics emerged as the most well-studied protective factors; individual characteristics were often investigated through "instrumental" operationalization and structural equational models, whereas school-level characteristics were typically explored through "simultaneous" or "progressive" operationalizations and multilevel modeling. Approximately 31 and 16% of the studies utilized national assessments and international large-scale assessment data, respectively. Both data sources promoted the exploration of school-level factors, with the former facilitating the exploration of protective factors across time and the latter contributing to the investigation of teaching-related factors.

Unveiling the Effects of Stressors on Task Performance: The Role of Thriving at Work and Resilience

This study unveils the effects of stressors on employees' task performance through the mediating role of thriving at work (TAW) and a moderating role of resilience (RES) grounding on conservation of resources (COR) theory. The analysis of collected data from 331 supervisor-employee dyads in the hospitality sector of China explicates that the role conflict (RC) and perceived workload have a negative influence on TAW, and thriving has a positive relationship with task performance. The results corroborate the mediating role of TAW between RC, perceived workload, and task performance. Furthermore, the RES suppressed the negative relationship between RC, perceived workload, and TAW. Moreover, our study underscores the theoretical and practical contributions regarding the negative influence of stressors on TAW by exhibiting the importance of the COR mechanism for employees' behavioral outcomes.

Effects of Basic Psychological Needs on Resilience: A Human Agency Model

Academic resilience refers to the ability to recover and achieve high academic outcomes despite environmental adversity in the academic setting. At the same time, self-determination theory (SDT) offers a human agency model to understand individuals' autonomy to achieve in various fields. The present longitudinal study explored the factors influencing resilience from the analytical framework of SDT to investigate how basic psychological needs strengthen students' resilience. A mediation model was proposed that resilience may mediate the relationship between basic psychological needs and academic performance. The results from 450 10th grade Chinese students showed that three basic psychological needs (i.e., autonomy, competence, and relatedness) facilitate academic resilience; academic resilience thus increases subsequent academic performance after controlling for previous test scores.

Life Course Transitions and Educational Trajectories: Examining Adolescents who Fall off Track Academically

Educational interventions typically center on youth displaying early academic risk, potentially overlooking those falling off track academically later in their educational careers. The current study investigated the extent to which life course transitions experienced during adolescence were linked to falling off-track academically in high school. Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 4284; 53% female; Mage = 14.88) documented that 1516 students displayed no educational risk in early high school, yet 14% did not pursue 4-year college by age 24. Analyses revealed the unique life course transitions predictive of falling off-track academically (i.e., sexual intercourse, alcohol use, family transitions, residential mobility). The study's findings highlight important intervention avenues to promote adolescents' continued educational persistence.

Investigating the reciprocal relations between academic buoyancy and academic adversity: Evidence for the protective role of academic buoyancy in reducing academic adversity over time

What is the relationship between academic buoyancy and academic adversity? For example, does the experience of academic adversity help build students’ academic buoyancy in school—or, does academic buoyancy lead to decreases in subsequent academic adversity? This longitudinal study of 481 high school students (Years 7–12) investigated the relations between academic buoyancy and academic adversity. Harnessing a cross-lagged panel design spanning two consecutive academic years, we employed structural equation modeling to investigate the extent to which prior academic buoyancy predicted subsequent academic adversity and the extent to which prior academic adversity predicted subsequent academic buoyancy—beyond the effects of sociodemographics, prior achievement, and auto-regression. We found that prior academic buoyancy significantly predicted lower subsequent academic adversity, but prior academic adversity did not significantly predict higher subsequent academic buoyancy. Interestingly, however, there was a marginal interaction effect such that students who experienced academic adversity but who were also high in academic buoyancy were less likely to experience academic adversity one year later. We conclude that it is important to instill in students the capacity to effectively deal with academic adversity—that is, academic buoyancy. We also conclude that some experience of academic adversity can have positive effects but predominantly when accompanied by high levels of academic buoyancy. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Students' academic and emotional adjustment during the transition from primary to secondary school: A cross-lagged study

The current study examined several indicators of students' academic and emotional adjustment during the transition from primary (i.e., grade 6) to secondary school (i.e., grades 7 and 9). Specifically, the study investigated how students' engagement, achievement, and burnout, as well as student-teacher conflict, evolve together over time. A total of 356 adolescents (57.3% boys) filled out questionnaires about their burnout and their behavioral and cognitive engagement. Students' achievement was measured using standardized test scores. Conflict in the teacher-student relationship was assessed using teacher ratings. Cross-lagged models revealed bi-directional associations between behavioral and cognitive engagement. More teacher conflict related to less behavioral engagement, whereas higher achievement predicted more cognitive engagement one and two school years later. The results underscore that, despite the interrelatedness of behavioral and cognitive engagement during the transition from primary to secondary school, both show unique contextual and personal correlates.

The Contributions of Parental, Academic, School, and Peer Factors to Differences by Socioeconomic Status in Adolescents' Locus of Control

An internal locus of control may be particularly valuable for youth with low socioeconomic status (SES), yet the mechanisms that externalize their control remain unclear. This study uses data on 16,450 US 8th graders surveyed for the National Education Longitudinal Study in 1988 and 1990. Results indicate family income is more closely associated with adolescents' locus of control than parents' occupations and educational attainment, and that race does not independently affect adolescents' locus of control net of these other components of SES. Findings also indicate higher SES adolescents feel more internal locus of control in largest part because their parents discuss school more often with them, their homes have more books and other cognitive resources, they receive higher grades in middle school science and social studies, they are more likely to attend a private rather than public school, their friends are more academically oriented, and they feel more safe at school.

Minority children and academic resilience in the Nordic welfare states

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to summarise and analyse empirical research on protective factors that promote academic resilience in ethnic minority children mainly aged between 13 and 18 years attending schools in the Nordic countries.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper was opted for a literature review of 23 peer-reviewed quantitative articles published between 1999 and 2014. The analysis entailed protective factors at both the personal and environmental levels in ethnic minority children.

Findings

Some minority children’s school performance may be just as good if not better than majority children when having similar or even lower socioeconomic status than majority children. Protective factors at the personal level included working hard, having a positive attitude towards school, and having high educational aspirations. Protective factors at the environmental level included supportive school systems, supportive schools, and supportive networks including parental qualities and support. The findings are comparable to the findings outside the Nordic countries with one exception; minority children in the Nordic countries performed better than expected despite socioeconomic disadvantages.

Research limitations/implications

Protective factors affecting academic resilience need further attention in a time with an increased global migration. Research implications may be related to how schools and policy makers develop supportive school systems, supportive schools, and supportive networks to contribute to making a difference for minority children’s educational opportunities in the Nordic countries.

Originality/value

Academic resilience is a relatively new research field in the Nordic countries. This review is the first review which has summarised and analysed existing findings on academic resilience in the Nordic countries in minority children.

Development and Validation of a Scale to Measure Academic Resilience in Mathematics

Abstract. The purpose of this study is to describe the development and validation of a scale designed to measure academic resilience in mathematics (ARM). The ARM scale includes nine items and was administered to 528 7th and 8th grade students in a low-income urban school in the United States. The Many-Facet Rasch model was used to investigate the psychometric quality of the scale. Students responded to a six-category rating scale with responses ranging from 1 (= strongly disagree) to 6 (= strongly agree). The overall reliability of person separation was good (Rel = .79), and the scale exhibited good model-data fit. The data indicated that there were no statistically significant differences in student perceptions of their academic resilience by socioeconomic status (SES) or by performance levels on a statewide-standardized mathematics assessment. There were, however, statistically significant differences in student perceptions of their academic resilience by gender and teacher-assigned grades. The ARM scale is a promising addition to the array of instruments for measuring affective and motivational states of students. This study supports the inference that individual perceptions of academic resilience can be measured in a meaningful way. The ARM scale holds promise as a tool for examining academic resilience in future research.

It's Beyond My Control: A Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis of Increasing Externality in Locus of Control, 1960-2002

Two meta-analyses found that young Americans increasingly believe their lives are controlled by outside forces rather than their own efforts. Locus of control scores became substantially more external (about .80 standard deviations) in college student and child samples between 1960 and 2002. The average college student in 2002 had a more external locus of control than 80% of college students in the early 1960s. Birth cohort/time period explains 14% of the variance in locus of control scores. The data included 97 samples of college students (n = 18,310) and 41 samples of children ages 9 to 14 (n = 6,554) gathered from dissertation research. The results are consistent with an alienation model positing increases in cynicism, individualism, and the self-serving bias. The implications are almost uniformly negative, as externality is correlated with poor school achievement, helplessness, ineffective stress management, decreased self-control, and depression.

Teen Parents and Academic Success

The purpose of this study was to explore the personal life stories of women who became mothers while still in their teen years. The focus was on themes that evolved as important in the lives of these women, including family support, partner support, mentor support, economic opportunity, resiliency, optimism, and spirituality. Each of the 22 women in the study offered her formulas for success that are useful for consideration by school nurses. Factors the women perceived to contribute to their success in achieving a master’s or doctoral degree are explored. This study helps to identify the support and community efforts necessary to improve the outcome for teen mothers today. Their unique stories are exemplars of resiliency and achievement.

Connection and Regulation at Home and in School

Qualities of adolescent-adult relationships across home and school environments are examined as predictors of academic growth in mathematics. An ethnically diverse sample of adolescents was drawn from the National Educational Longitudinal Study, 1988. In separate analyses, adolescents’perceptions of (a) connection with parents and teachers and (b) regulation from parents and teachers uniquely predicted academic growth in math from 8th to 12th grade. Thus, assets across home and school were additive. No evidence supported a compensatory process in which less connection or regulation at home was compensated by the presence of these experiences in school. Within school, teacher connection was the strongest predictor for all adolescents, but a combination of connection and regulation, making up an authoritative teaching style, predicted even greater academic growth in math for adolescents from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

Using Parcels to Convert Path Analysis Models Into Latent Variable Models

The biasing effects of measurement error in path analysis models can be overcome by the use of latent variable models. In cases where path analysis is used in practice, it is often possible to use parcels as indicators of a latent variable. The purpose of the current study was to compare latent variable models in which parcels were used as indicators of the latent variables, path analysis models of the aggregated variables, and models in which reliability estimates were used to correct for measurement error in path analysis models. Results showed that point estimates of path coefficients were smallest for the path analysis models and largest for the latent variable models. It is concluded that, whenever possible, it is better to use a latent variable model in which parcels are used as indicators than a path analysis model using total scale scores.

Intractable self-fulfilling prophecies fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education

The civil rights struggle for equal educational opportunity has yet to be achieved at the start of the 21st century. Inequality persists but problem and remedy are refrained from integrating schools, to ensuring equal access in resegregated settings, to closing the performance gap. As seen through ecological theory (R. S. Weinstein, 2002b), complex, multilayered, and interactive negative self-fulfilling prophecies create or perpetuate educational inequities and unequal outcomes. Society has failed to grapple with its entrenched roots in the achievement culture of schools. If this insidious dynamic is to be changed, an educational system that sorts for differentiated pathways must be replaced with one that develops the talents of all. Psychology has a critical role to play in promoting a new understanding of malleable human capabilities and optimal conditions for their nurturance in schooling.

Overcoming inequality in schooling: a call to action for community psychology

Community psychology, indeed psychology as a discipline, has been largely absent from the table of school reform. Schools are critical socializing forces in society and serve as the one institution through which the full diversity of our child population passes. At the start of the 21st century, despite successive waves of legislation, the goals of the civil rights struggle for equality in educational opportunity have yet to be achieved. Negative self-fulfilling prophecies, reflected at individual, interpersonal, institutional, and societal levels, play a critical role in creating and perpetuating unequal opportunities to learn. Such effects as well as pathways for preventive intervention are best understood through ecological lenses. Our field must commit a greater share of resources to collaborative and systemic change for a broader learning so that all children, regardless of their differences, have continuing and nonstigmatized opportunities to develop into competent adults.