Assessing the outcomes of school-based partnership resilience intervention

Abstract

This study reports on the outcomes of educational psychology school-based intervention. The aim was to determine whether the intervention served as an educational pathway to resilience. Through a concurrent mixed-methods research design interpreted through a pragmatic lens, academic school performance of students in a rural school was used as an outcome variable to gauge educational resilience in relation to educational psychology-rural school intervention.  Quantitatively, academic document sampling from two student cohorts were  sampled (n = 53). Qualitatively, knowledgeable teachers from the school (n = 2)  were interviewed to gain more in-depth knowledge of the perceptions of academic performance and intervention. The data analysis techniques consist of descriptive statistics and t-tests on the sampled data, and thematic analysis of interview  transcripts. As evidenced, research findings suggest that partnership intervention to increase pathways to socio-emotional competence and educational pathways to influence academic performance of students was not significant. The findings further suggest that partnership intervention certainly holds numerous benefits, yet in this case, they are not directly evidenced in the performance of students. Quantitative academic performance scores are poor indicators of school-based intervention outcomes; we recommend that future research should include qualitative student self-report.

Keywords: academic performance; educational psychology; partnership; protective resilience; resources; risk; rural school; service learning