Resilience and school engagement by gender and education level in secondary education

Abstract

The aim of this study was to analyse the relationships between resilience and behavioural, emotional and cognitive components of school engagement. The study included 1,250 secondary education students with a mean age of 13.72 years (SD=1.09) of whom 612 (49%) were male and 638 (50%) female. Two assessment tools were administered: Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) and School Engagement Measurement (SEM). The results indicated that resilient adolescents showed significantly higher scores in behavioural, emotional, and cognitive engagement than their non-resilient peers. This pattern of results was the same for the total sample and for sex and education level groups. The discussion focuses on the importance of promoting school adjustment of adolescents through improvement of socio-emotional skills.