Adversity Exposure and Protective Factors for Academic Resilience: A Brief Literature Review

This brief literature review examines academic resilience in adolescence mainly within the context of middle school and high school. In the first chapter, the concept of academic resilience takes center stage. Starting from a concept of general psychological resilience, it investigates the conditions under which academic resilience develops and how it is conceptualized within the academic context. Then, the issue of duality of resilience concept being both an outcome and a process is considered. Moving on to the second chapter, the discussion starts to revolve around adverse childhood experiences that can hinder optimal life outcomes, especially in education. These adverse experiences are thoroughly explored and to understand their consequences, their prevalence as well as methods for their identification and measurement are presented. Finally, in the third last part of this thesis, the focus shifts to protective factors that mitigate the effects of adverse experiences. This chapter explores how these protective factors interact with adversity to provide a defense, ultimately reducing negative outcomes. Always within the socio-ecological model, individual factors with a particular emphasis on future orientation, family factors and finally socio-environmental factors are explained. In these three chapters, the aim is to provide an understanding of academic resilience in adolescence, shedding light on both its challenges and potential pathways for success.