Academic resilience in European countries: The role of teachers, families, and student profiles

Abstract

Academic resilience is a student’s ability to achieve academic results significantly higher than would be expected according to their socioeconomic level. In this study, we aimed to identify the characteristics of students, families, and teacher activities which had the greatest impact on academic resilience. The sample comprised 117,539 fourth grade students and 6,222 teachers from 4,324 schools in member states of the European Union that participated in the PIRLS 2016 study. We specified a two-level hierarchical linear model in two phases: in the first level we used the students’ personal and family background variables, in the second level we used the variables related to teaching activity. In the first phase we used the complete model for all countries and regions, in the second phase we produced a model for each country with the highest possible number of statistically significant variables. The results indicated that the students’ personal and family variables that best predicted resilience were the reading self-confidence index, which increased the probability of student resilience by between 62 and 130 percentage points, a feeling of belonging to the school, which increased the chances of being resilient by up to 40 percentage points, and support from the family before starting primary school (Students from Lithuania who had done early literary activities in the family setting were twice as likely to be resilient than those who had not). The teaching-related factors best predicting resilience were keeping order in the classroom, a safe and orderly school environment (increasing chances of resilience by up to 62 percentage points), and teaching focused on comprehension and reflection, which could increase the probability of resilience by up to 61 percentage points.