The academic resilience of native and immigrant-origin students in selected European countries

ABSTRACT

Socio-economic disadvantaged students are not equally vulnerable: some of them are defined as ‘resilient’ students because they are able to ‘beat the odds’ and achieve positive academic outcomes. Using data from the last two editions (2015 and 2018) of OECD-Programme for International Students Assessment, we aim to analyse the academic resilience (i.e. the 25% most socio-economically disadvantaged students who achieve an adequate level of proficiency in reading, science, and math) of native and immigrant-origin students. We focus attention on the comparison between resilient students in three Southern European countries (namely Greece, Italy, and Spain) that have only recently become destinations of migratory flows, and those in four North-western European countries (namely France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom) characterised by consolidated migratory traditions. Empirical findings show that self-efficacy beliefs, positive home environment, and language attitudes at home promote good academic adjustments among immigrant-origin students. Furthermore, the ‘double origin gap’ (socio-economic and migratory) of students makes them more dependent on the school environment and climate than their native peers. Specific strategies at school may be further developed (such as improving extra-curricular activities) in Southern countries to promote the inclusion of migrants and reduce their vulnerability.

KEYWORDS:

• Children of immigrants
• academic resilience
• European countries
• multilevel analysis
• PISA data

Acknowledgements

This paper was presented at the 49th Scientific meeting of the Italian Statistical Society at the University of Palermo (June 20–22, 2018). We would like to thank participants for useful insights on previous versions of this manuscript. As usual, all errors remain ours. We would also thank the external referee for his useful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The datasets analysed during the current study are available on request in the OECD-PISA repository, https://www.oecd.org/pisa/

Notes

1 PISA scales are divided, in each domain assessed, into six or more proficiency levels; each proficiency level is described in terms of the knowledge and skills that students, whose performance falls within the level, demonstrate in the PISA test. A detailed description of the competences demonstrated by students at each proficiency level can be found in the 2019 OECD publication. The cut-off point, to reach proficiency Level 3 in each subject (480 points in the reading assessment, 482 points in the mathematics assessment, and 484 points in the science assessment), does not vary across countries or across the PISA editions.

2 In the OECD-PISA framework, the literacy performance score is measured using ten plausible values estimated for each PISA domain (reading, mathematics and science). Plausible values are multiple random draws from the unobservable latent student achievement and cannot be aggregated at student level. Therefore, the first plausible value of each domain is used to select the resilient students. The choice to take the first plausible value is arbitrary; sensitivity analysis (available upon request) shows that results are of the same magnitude and significance if we take into consideration other plausible values.

3 Multivariate Imputation with Chained Equations (MICE) was used (Raghunathan et al. 2001; Van Buuren 2007). Subsequently, each missing value is replaced trough a single imputation approach. Single imputation was chosen and validated with an ANOVA across imputations to test whether the variance within imputations was greater than the variance between imputations for a certain variable.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Naples Federico II, under the grant E66J17000330001, D.R. n.408 of 07/02/2017, and by Ministry of Education Universities and Research, under the grant 2017N9LCSC_004 (PRIN 2017).