Who benefits from the psychology of achievement?

Background. Academic underperformance is a serious concern affecting students worldwide. Educational inequity contributes to academic underperformance whereby students with specific sociodemographic characteristics receive less school resources and adequate teaching relative to their peers. Gender, race, and socioeconomic status act as salient and common sources of educational inequity, and as such, serve as risk factors that increase the likelihood of academic failure. Academic resilience, defined as the increased likelihood of school success in the face of adversities, has been proposed as a potential solution for the deleterious effects of academic risk. Fostering academic protective factors through school-based interventions to improve academic resilience may promote effective and equitable school performance.
Objectives. The study had two main objectives. Firstly, the review aimed to determine if gains in academic resilience via the use of specific psychosocial protective factors can improve academic performance among primary and secondary school students. The second objective was to assess whether or not relative improvements in school performance were equitable across the PROGRESS-Plus factors of gender, race, and socioeconomic status.
Methods. A comprehensive search for prominent academic-related psychosocial protective factors informed the search strategy for relevant studies. A systematic review of school-based interventions for academic resilience was conducted, including database searching, grey literature searching, and contacting relevant authors for additional research. Effectiveness data syntheses were performed using a meta-analysis of main effects across ten studies as well as a sensitivity analysis for two low-risk of bias studies. Harvest plots synthesised equity evidence across four studies while equity-relevant information was summarised in a bar graph. Several robustness checks (funnel plot, Egger’s test, influence diagnostics) were performed as an explanatory measure to account for sources of bias and between-study variability.
Results. The results indicated that academic resilience interventions are effective at ameliorating school performance (g=0.8, p=0.008). The equity results from the harvest plot suggest that these interventions may reduce educational inequity across gender and race for female students and minority students but no evidence was reported on socioeconomic status. The results from the sensitivity analysis were large (g=2.11) but statistically insignificant (p=0.19). The robustness checks confirmed the presence of statistical heterogeneity, which was attributed to the inclusion of one study, Miller (2017).
Conclusions. The findings indicated that academic resilience interventions may be both effective and equitable at improving educational performance. Given the novelty of this research field, additional research is needed across all academic protective factors, especially self-care behaviours and academic help-seeking. Additionally, better reporting standards, including equity guidelines for non-randomised trials and published protocols, are vital to future research endeavours. Academic resilience interventions have major practice implications given the flexibility in delivery, wide range of use across differing school levels, and cross-cultural relevance. Considering international education policy, these interventions provide an insightful and innovative way of closing global educational gaps, which may have large implications for the U.N. Sustainable Development Goal 4 for providing high-quality and accessible education for all.