Unpacking Disciplinary Academic Resilience
A Review of Conceptualisations, Potentials, and Implications for Science Education Research
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21585758 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nhu Truong (0009-0007-1665-362X, Stockholm University, corresponding author), Ngọc Phương Bình Trương (0000-0002-9535-9221), Anna T Danielsson (0000-0002-3407-9007, Stockholm University), Per Anderhag (0000-0002-5547-5834, Stockholm University) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-05-16 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Science & Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0926-7220 • E-ISSN: 1573-1901 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s11191-026-00749-1 |
| OpenAlex | W7161381681 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 109 |
Research on resilience over the past decades has been seeking to understand how some students manage to overcome the odds associated with exposure to adversities. Within this research field, the concept of resilience has been extensively examined, with “academic resilience” has been widely used in education to describe resilience in relation to learning and cognitive performance. At the same time, science education research has long focused on understanding and counteracting educational inequalities affecting minoritised students and has generated insights into how some students persists and succeed despite structural and social challenges. However, these issues have rarely been explicitly examined through the lens of academic resilience. This review paper therefore examines how academic resilience has been conceptualised and mobilised within science education research, and considers what a resilience framework contributes to understanding how students navigate structural barriers in learning science. Through a review of thirteen science education journals, the analysis identifies four overarching themes in the limited but emerging use of academic resilience in the field, as well as a range of resources that support students’ engagement and educational trajectories within context shaped by structural constraints. These resources are discussed in relation to how academic resilience has been operationalised within science education research, advancing a conceptualisation of academic resilience that could be potentially brings greater analytical coherence to existing research on the phenomena of “succeeding against the odds” in science education
Discipline · Educational research · Psychological resilience · Career Development and Diversity · Grit, Self-Efficacy, and Motivation · Resilience and Mental Health
The Resilience of Students with an Immigrant Background
Childhood Resilience
Girls and science
Who wants to have a career in science or math? exploring adolescents' future aspirations by gender and race/ethnicity
Educational aspirations in inner city schools
Funds of knowledge and discourses and hybrid space
Risk and promotive effects in the explanation of persistent serious delinquency in boys.
Science identity as a landscape of becoming
Interest, motivation and attitude towards science and technology at K-12 levels
Stability and volatility of STEM career interest in high school
Counterspaces for women of color in STEM higher education
Psychological Resilience
What is resilience? A review and concept analysis
Coming out in STEM
BlackGirlMagic
Women’s representation in science predicts national gender-science stereotypes
Academic resilience and its psychological and educational correlates
Resilience Processes in Development
Socioeconomic Status and Academic Achievement
Overcoming adversity
Pathways to low-SES student success in science
Looking Back, Moving Forward, and Strengthening HPSS Scholarship in Science Education
“It is what it is”
Resilience is not enough for Black women in STEM
States of Knowledge
Reassembling the Social
Resilience
Losing its expected communal value
Recipe for educational success
Typologies of secondary school student academic resilience in science with classroom and school context predictors
The Construction of Physics as a Quintessentially Masculine Subject
Vulnerability research and the issue of primary prevention
Resilience in ecosystemic context
The social ecology of resilience
Unveiling the Promise of Community Cultural Wealth to Sustaining Latina/o Students’ College-Going Information Networks
Ordinary magic
Promoting Student Interest in Science
The “Exceptional” Physics Girl
Science literacy in the twenty-first century
How do adverse family characteristics and shock events shape children’s educational outcomes in Vietnam? – Evidence from Young Lives surveys
Academic Resilience Among Undocumented Latino Students
Social and ecological resilience
The Construct of Resilience
Understanding the science experiences of successful women of color
Resiliency and Vulnerability to Adverse Developmental Outcomes Associated With Poverty
Epistemic Cultures
What School Factors are Associated with the Success of Socio-Economically Disadvantaged Students? An Empirical Investigation Using Pisa Data
Academic Resilience Among Children from Disadvantaged Social Groups in India
Academic Resilience in Rural Chinese Children
Equality of Educational Opportunities, Schools' Characteristics and Resilient Students
| Highly cited | No |
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