Students Who Beat the Odds: Measuring Academic Resilience to Understand What Promotes Success Despite Adversity

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: Academic Coping and Resilience in K–12

Abstract

Academic resilience captures academic success despite adversity and thus is an important concept for redressing educational inequalities. However, great variation in the way academic resilience is measured has complicated attempts to reconcile disparate findings in the field. Using several international large-scale assessment datasets, this study explored how different operationalisations influence the reported prevalence and strength of protective factors related to academic resilience. The results demonstrated that the decisions made about how to measure academic resilience are important and provided support for different operationalisations to align with the study purpose. A high level of transparency about how researchers choose to operationalise academic resilience is, therefore, required both to ensure the accurate representation of resilient students and facilitate across-study comparisons.

Authors

• Georgia Rudd, The University of Auckland

• Kane Meissel, The University of Auckland

• Frauke Meyer, The University of Auckland