The importance of academic resilience in pandemic times. Diagnosis and opportunities for supporting students

Abstract

The article is devoted to the phenomenon of resilience in the educational area, which is defined as an increased probability of success in school, despite experiencing adversities caused by the characteristics of the individual, his living conditions and experiences. The academic resilience construct was used, referring to the convention of the authors of the PISA/OECD study, and placed in the current context of the pandemic threat experience. In order to characterise the students belonging to the academic resilience group, two research questions were formulated: What is the scope of the phenomenon of academic resilience? and What individual and contextual factors are specific to this group of students? The analyses were performed on panel data from a nationwide project “Paths of educational development of young people – post-secondary schools”, in which a number of psychological tools and questionnaires examining the socio-educational functioning of students were used. Comparative analyses of the means for the distinguished group against the three reference groups show similarities and differences of intellectual and social functioning as well as attitudes, relationships, anti-social and anti-school behaviour, and leisure activities. The obtained picture of academic resilient students is not unequivocal, but thanks to the study it acquires a more specific character. Knowledge about these students can allow for the preparation of effective compensation measures in education, support the functioning of children from low-status families, and increase the efficiency of functioning during difficult experiences, such as the recently experienced school closures and the introduction of distance learning.