The main objective of the study is to investigate the well-being of academically resilient students. It is an important topic that can shed light on why some students achieve higher than others, given their similar prerequisites.

Previous studies have shown a clear positive relationship between students’ socioeconomic status (SES) and their school outcomes, which implies that students from high SES families, in general, perform better in school (e.g., Sirin, 2005). Such a relationship often reflects the socioeconomic gap in achievement (e.g. Chmielewski, 2019). Narrowing and ideally closing the achievement gap has become an increasingly important task for policymakers globally.

However, previous studies also indicate that the family background not only directly affects children’s school outcomes but may also impose its effect indirectly through well-being. For instance, it was found that, as two crucial aspects of SES, parental education and family wealth positively affect a child’s psychological well-being (e.g., Von Rueden et al., 2006). Other studies suggest that well-being positively affects achievement. In a meta-analysis, Bücker et al., (2018) systematically reviewed and analysed 151 effect sizes from 47 studies, and found a significant, albeit small to intermediate relationship between subjective well-being and academic achievement at r = 0.164, 95% CI [0.113, 0.216]. Whilst previous research on an indirect effect of family SES on achievement through well-being is limited, studies do nevertheless suggest that the relationship between poverty and educational achievement is mediated by emotional well-being (Sznitman et al., 2011), which is worthwhile for further investigation.

Moreover, previous research focused on these relationships and effects for the total population. There is, however, a special group of students, often referred to as academically resilient students, that achieve high despite their low SES background. These resilient students are scarcely represented in educational research. Therefore, finding out factors lying behind their success can have profound implications for educational policy and practices aiming to reduce the achievement gap.

To achieve equity in education, it is the school system’s responsibility to ensure that all students, regardless of their prerequisites, are given the support they need to succeed. Going beyond the individual student level, this study aims at analysing the school’s compensatory power by including factors on school-level, such as the extent to which teacher and student behavior is promoting or hindering learning.

Bronfenbrenner’s ecological system theory is used to theoretically frame the study. This theory is centering the individual into an environmental context structured in different systems, namely the Microsystem, the Mesosystem, the Exosystem, the Macrosystem, and the Chronosystem. As the child interacts with his/her environment, it learns and develops different skills, such as making use of resources and finding appropriate responses to stress, as well as encountering barriers and facilitators that can shape a child’s well-being (Ben-Arieh, 2010).In this study, special attention is paid to the Microsystem, which includes the student’s close interaction with its immediate environments such as interactions in the classroom or family; as well as the Mesosystem, which describes “the interrelations among two or more settings in which the developing person actively participates” (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, p. 25). Hence, how experiences at home can, for instance, influence the experiences made at school. Bronfenbrenner’s theory provides a base for the multi-dimensional measurement of well-being including relationships to peers, parents and teachers, as well as for the multi-level analysis including individual and school-level factors and their interaction.

The main research questions are:

• What level of well-being do academically resilient students report and how do they compare to their non-resilient peers?
• What is the relationship between well-being and academic resilience (and is it moderated by the school-context)?
• What factors on individual and school-level predict academic resilience?

The study investigates the well-being of academically resilient students and compares them to their non-resilient peers, using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Following the definition of Agasisti et al., (2018), academically resilient students are defined as those who fall in the bottom 25% of the countries distribution of the Index of Economic, Social and Cultural Status (ESCS) and achieve at or above level 3 in the PISA domains mathematics, reading and science. The sample is split into multiple groups accordingly, one of which is academically resilient students. In doing so, the group of academically resilient students can be compared to other students from disadvantaged backgrounds that show lower achievement and other high-achieving students from more advantaged backgrounds. Students’ self-reported variables are used to examine the dimensionality of the construct well-being. The psychological dimension is measured by the student’s motivation and test anxiety. The social dimension is measured by the students’ relationship with their parents or peers as well as being represented by students’ sense of belonging to school and exposure to bullying. Student’s self-concept is used to measure the cognitive dimension of well-being. The PISA index of student behaviour hindering learning as well as the index of teacher behaviour hindering learning is used at school-level. The measurement invariance of these dimensions of well-being is tested to ensure comparability across the sub-groups. A multilevel model is specified in the next step to examine the effects of individual psychological factors (e.g., well-being) and school-related factors (e.g. the extent to which learning is hindered by student and teacher behaviour) on student achievement in different groups of students.

As the study is still ongoing, final results cannot be reported yet. Preliminary descriptive results indicate that there are disparities across different well-being factors when comparing students from varying socio-economic backgrounds and achievement levels. For instance, academically resilient students seem to report higher levels of motivation as well as lower levels of test anxiety than their disadvantaged but lower-achieving peers. Yet, preliminary results also suggest that students with a more advantaged socio-economic background report the highest levels of well-being, hinting at not only an “achievement gap” but also a “well-being gap”. Multilevel analysis is still ongoing. There are, however, indications that different factors of well-being predict the achievement with varying effect sizes across the sub-populations of students. Further, the immediate learning environment, i.e., the extent to which student and teacher behaviour is hindering learning, may negatively affect the overall student achievement, as well as the high achievement of academically resilient students in particular.

Agasisti, T., Avvisati, F., Borgonovi, F., & Longobardi, S. (2018). Academic resilience: What schools and countries do to help disadvantaged students succeed in PISA. OECD Publishing. Ben-Arieh, A. (2010). From Child Welfare to Children Well-Being. The Child Indicators Perspective. In S. Kamerman, S. A. Phipps, & A. Ben-Arieh (Eds.), From Child Welfare to Child Well-Being. An International Perspective on Knowledge in the Service of Policy Making. Springer Netherlands. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Harvard University Press. Bücker, S., Nuraydin, S., Simonsmeier, B. A., Schneider, M., & Luhmann, M. (2018). Subjective well-being and academic achievement: A meta-analysis. Journal of Research in Personality, 74, 83–94. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2018.02.007 Chmielewski, A. (2019). The Global Increase in the Socioeconomic Achievement Gap, 1964 to 2015. American Sociological Review, 84(3), 517-544. Sirin, S. (2005). Socioeconomic Status and Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analytic Review of Research. Review of Educational Research, 75(3), 417-453. Sznitman, S., Reisel, L., & Romer, D. (2011). The Neglected Role of Adolescent Emotional Well-Being in National Educational Achievement: Bridging the Gap Between Education and Mental Health Policies. Journal of Adolescent Health, 48(2), 135-142. Von Rueden, U., Gosch, A., Rajmil, L., Bisegger, C., & Ravens-Sieberer, U. (2006). Socioeconomic determinants of health related quality of life in childhood and adolescence: Results from a European study. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 60(2), 130–135.