Academic resilience: The roles of parental involvement and gender

Abstract

In fostering intellectual care in young people, attaining academic success is a major concern. The need for more empirical studies is therefore  necessary in order to understand the factors that may affect academic resilience in adolescents. Therefore, this study investigated the extent to which parental involvement and gender predict academic resilience among adolescents in Ondo State, Nigeria using Flach’s theory of resilience. A total of 347 adolescents (178 males; 169 females) were selected for the study using purposive and accidental sampling techniques. Their ages ranged from 12 to 19 years (M = 2.20; SD = .83). The results of the multiple regression showed that parental involvement significantly predicted academic resilience in such a way that high parental involvement is linked with high academic resilience. Also, gender significantly predicted  academic resilience in such a way that female adolescents had better academic resilience compared to their male counterpart. In order to improve the academic resilience of adolescents, parents are advised to be more involved in their children educational activities both at home and in the school. It is also recommended that appropriate psychological intervention programmes that contribute to the development of academic resilience should be provided for adolescents and most especially male adolescents.

Keywords: Academic resilience, parental involvement, gender, adolescents, Nigeria, Flach’s theory of resilience