Academic Resilience in Mathematics and Science: Europe TIMSS-2019 Data

Academically resilient students are those who exhibit high performance starting from a disadvantaged socioeconomic situation. This study aims to identify the personal, school, and national factors that are associated with that resilience in the European Union (EU).

The sample comprised 96556 fourth grade students from 21 EU countries participating in TIMSS-2019. Two three-level logistic regression models were specified for the overall sample.

The EU has an average of 25.67% resilient students in mathematics and 24.16% in science. Student confidence and having done prior linguistic tasks at school were the variables with the most predictive power after accounting for gender and students' immigrant background. The European countries analyzed largely compensated for the doubly-disadvantaged situation of immigrant students. Those countries with higher proportions of low-performing students had fewer resilient students.

The educational policies in the EU member states are able to largely compensate for unfavorable starting positions; fundamentally, policies of a social nature such as support for immigrant students, families, or schools.