The general objective of the research was to reveal the components of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme (DP) that support academic persistence and its associated individual skills or personality traits, and to investigate the impact of these educational components and personal traits on the relevant academic outcomes, as well as the potential mediating role of academic persistence in this relationship. In order to investigate these relationships, we performed both an in-depth analysis of the IB educational components that might support academic persistence and its associated individual competencies, and a comparison between IB students (in five European countries) and Romanian non-IB students on the relevant psychological and educational dimensions. 

The International Baccalaureate Organization is an international educational foundation that offers four educational programmes. One of them the Diploma Programme, for students aged 16 to 19 years, which is a two-year pre-university curriculum aiming to offer a preparation specific to academic and future university challenges by balancing internal assessments and final written examinations with external IB examiners. The IBO reports in 2014 almost 5,500 programs offered in more than 4,000 schools around the globe, divided in regions as Asia-Pacific, The Americas, Africa, Europe and Middle East.

Academic persistence has received wide attention from educational research, mainly as a primary outcome susceptible to multiple sources of influence, in both secondary and postsecondary education (Reason, 2003, 2009; Pascarella & Terrezini, 2005). For this reason, much of the theoretical discussion has revolved around the factors that shape this psychological phenomenon, with little attention to isolating its manifestations and consequences on learning outcomes, namely retention, dropout intentions and achievement. We approach academic persistence as the individual ability to direct personal resources towards the achievement of academic tasks and goals, including program completion. In other words, it is a modifiable individual non-cognitive aspect, operationalized as the degree to which students feel compelled to pursue the goals needed to finish their current level of studies, regardless of the difficulties and obstacles they face. Several personal factors that sustain academic engagement and persistence have been pinpointed by previous research, such as perceived competence and self-efficacy (Zimmerman, Bandura & Martinez-Pons, 1998), student engagement (Martin, 2007), intrinsic motivation (Deci & Ryan, 1985), autonomy (Reeve, Ryan, Deci & Jang, 2007), effortful self-control (Mischel, 2014) or grit (Duckworth et al, 2007). Also, school factors that promote persistence have been pinpointed, such as the school’s budgetary allocation to student services and low student-teacher ratio (Chen, 2012); school quality (Bound, Lovenheim & Turner, 2010); perceived institutional support for all needs of the students, including social and emotional (LanRong & Preissle, 2009); promoting civic engagement, curiosity, initiative and deep action learning (Allen, 2011); making students aware of the relationship between their interests and values and what they are learning (Hulleman & Harackiewicz, 2009), etc.

Our research questions were: Which educational strategies of the IB DP support students’ academic persistence?   What are the personality traits that contribute to students’ academic persistence? How do the components of the IB DP influence these traits contributing to academic persistence? What are the relationships between (a) the components of the IB DP, (b) the individual traits, (c) academic persistence and (d) the outcomes of academic persistence (namely academic performance, intentions to drop-out, absenteeism and academic aspirations)? What are the differences between IB students and equivalent non-IB students in regards to academic persistence and its associated traits, on one hand, and their relationships with the relevant educational outcomes, on the other?

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