Recent studies indicate that Sweden faces issues of decreasing educational equity (Siebecke & Jarl, 2022; Yang Hansen & Gustafsson, 2019), suggesting that the impact of socioeconomic background on achievement has increased. However, some students achieve high despite disadvantages in their socioeconomic background that place them at risk for low achievement. These students are often referred to as academically resilient and yield hope for a more equitable future. In general terms, resilience is grounded in the recognition that individuals’ responses to adversities differ (Rutter, 2012). While some struggle or fail in the face of adversity, others seem to adjust just fine. Those, who demonstrate positive adaptation despite being exposed to adversities, are usually considered resilient (e.g., Masten & Obradovic, 2006). The identification of supportive and risk factors can help socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals in becoming academically successful and, thus, improve educational equity.

Previous studies have indicated that individual and external resources, such as supportive adults and peers (Fergus & Zimmerman, 2005) and a student’s sense of belonging at school (Gonzalez & Padilla, 1997) can promote a student’s resilience. According to a framework by Borgonovi and Pál (2016), these indicators - that is a student’s sense of belonging at school and their relationship with their teachers, parents, and peers – also act as subdimensions of social well-being. This may imply a relationship between academic resilience and social well-being. Yet, research on the (social) well-being of academically resilient students is scarce, especially in Sweden. While the relationship between social well-being and academic resilience is underexplored, previous research does indicate a positive albeit small relationship between well-being and achievement (Bücker et al., 2018; Kaya & Erdem, 2021). However, this relationship is not straightforward and a multidimensional conceptualization of well-being is needed to assess which aspects are particularly important for achievement (Clarke, 2020). In general, well-being is hypothesized to be a multi-dimensional construct consisting of social, physical, and mental/psychological dimensions, which can further be structured in subdimensions (Colombo, 1984). The social dimension of well-being, for instance, can be measured by including subdimensions such as the students’ relationship with peers, parents and teachers and their sense of belonging at school (Borgonovi & Pál, 2016). These subdimensions have been found to be interrelated. For instance, a student’s sense of belonging is closely related to their relationship with peers and teachers (Govorova et al., 2020).

Thus, the main objective of the present study is to investigate whether and how students’ social well-being predicts their academic resilience. The present study focuses on social well-being, as one important dimension of student well-being, and attempts to capture its complexity by not only modeling its’ possible relationship to academic resilience but by also considering the interrelationship between subdimensions of social well-being. The study is anchored in Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory and specifically focuses on the students’ microsystem, that is their close interaction with their immediate environments, as well as the mesosystem, which describes the interrelation among the environments in which the student participates (Bronfenbrenner, 1979).

Making use of data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) from 2018, the study investigates the relationship between academic resilience and the social well-being of 15-year-old students in Sweden. After weighing the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches to operationalizing academic resilience, we decided to apply a definition-driven approach, which is said to reflect academic resilience "in its most literal sense: academic achievement despite adversity" (Rudd et al., 2021, p. 5). Thus, academically resilient students are defined as those who achieve at or above Level 3 in the PISA domains reading, mathematics, and science, despite falling in the bottom quartile of Sweden’s distribution of the Index of Economic, Social and Cultural Status (ESCS) (Agasisti et al., 2018). Level 3 corresponds to a median achievement level that is said to prepare students “for success later in life” (Agasisti et al., 2018, p. 8). This study only focuses on socioeconomically disadvantaged students, leading to a total sample size of 1337 students, 358 of whom were considered resilient. A dichotomous variable measuring academic resilience is used as a dependent variable in the present study. The measure of social well-being is based on a well-being framework proposed by Borgonovi and Pál (2016) and adapted to the newer measures in PISA 2018 (for an overview, see Borgonovi, 2020). According to this framework, the social dimension of well-being can be measured using students’ self-reported data on the sense of belonging at school, exposure to bullying, teacher support, teacher feedback, and parental emotional support. Each of these subdimensions of social well-being was measured as a latent variable consisting of three to six indicators. Data analyses were run in SPSS 29 and Mplus 8. First, confirmatory factor analysis was used to test whether the data fit the measurement models. Secondly, structural models based on an extensive literature review were built. The models reflect the interrelation of subdimensions of social well-being as well as their relation to academic resilience. Due to the nested data structure (i.e., the clustering of individual data in schools) but small intraclass correlations, a single-level model was used. Standard errors of the SEM parameters were adjusted by using the TYPE = COMPLEX command in Mplus, accompanied by the robust maximum likelihood estimator, cluster, and student weights. To evaluate model fit, local and global fit indices were consulted.

Preliminary analyses resulted in well-fitting measurement models for all tested well-being subdimensions (i.e., sense of belonging at school, exposure to bullying, teacher support, perceived teacher feedback, and parental emotional support). A structural model linking these subdimensions with each other, as well as with the dichotomous endogenous measure of academic resilience resulted in an overall good global and local model fit. Model results confirm the interrelation of subdimensions of social well-being that was highlighted in previous research. For instance, parental support and students’ exposure to bullying significantly predict their sense of belonging at school. Yet, preliminary results suggest that only the students’ perceived support by their teachers significantly predicts their academic resilience while other subdimensions of well-being did not indicate any significant relationship with academic resilience. The presentation of results includes a discussion of the study’s possible limitations due to cross-sectional data, reduced statistical power by cause of group sizes, and the necessary but rather artificial dichotomization of resilient vs. nonresilient students. Even though the study focuses on academic resilience and well-being in Sweden, results can be of importance beyond the Swedish context. Issues of educational inequity and the importance of fostering student well-being are topical and prominent across Europe. For instance, in countries such as Austria, Belgium, France, and Germany, more than 15% of the variation in science performance can be explained by the student’s socioeconomic background alone (OECD, 2018). Research on the group of academically resilient students can shed light on the reasons why some students seem to defeat the odds and show positive adaptation despite adversity. Thus, more research on academic resilience and well-being is needed – in Sweden and beyond.

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