Factors of student resilience obtained from TIMSS and PISA longitudinal studies

Periodical
Issues in Educational Research
Volume
30
Year
2020
Issue number
4
Page range
1245-1263
Relates to study/studies
TIMSS 2011
PISA 2012

Factors of student resilience obtained from TIMSS and PISA longitudinal studies

Abstract

It is well established that family socio-economic status (SES) is strongly related to academic performance. Nonetheless, there is a group of children with high levels of academic achievement who come from disadvantaged family backgrounds. These children possess what is called `academic resilience'. In our study, we want to see whether the two largest international comparative studies are consistent in terms of identifying resilient students and whether the factors of academic resilience are common for the two studies. We use data from a Russian longitudinal study Trajectories in Education and Careers (TrEC), in which students' achievement was measured with both the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS, 8th grade) and, a year later, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Our study focuses on the relationship between individual and school-related factors of resilience and whether these factors are specific to a particular educational outcome (TIMSS or PISA), or are of a more universal nature. We show that attitudes towards mathematics and test scores in general are positively related to the probability of becoming a resilient student. We also find that school related variables (such as average school SES and school type) are more significant for TIMSS than for PISA results. Our study shows that there are students who are both TIMSS and PISA resilient.