Investigating the association between resilience and educational success in German secondary education

Abstract The capacity to cope effectively with adverse or psychologically taxing situations, commonly referred to as resilience, has been identified as a valuable psychological trait. It can be assumed that resilience is also advantageous for secondary school students, who must perform consistently well in order to attain higher educational qualifications and establish their future career paths. Drawing on two large German panel datasets comprising more than ten survey waves each ( N = 18,160; 839 schools), we examine whether psychological resilience, operationalized as a dispositional Big Five profile (low neuroticism, high extraversion and conscientiousness), is associated with improved educational outcomes in lower and upper secondary education. Our results show no evidence that students classified as resilient achieve higher standardized test scores; however, they report statistically significantly better grades in mathematics and German. Moreover, resilient students exhibit a tendency to obtain more advanced secondary school qualifications, although the evidence is mixed across cohorts. Finally, analyses of longitudinal life satisfaction indicate that resilient students report considerably higher levels of life satisfaction than their non-resilient peers, although the difference narrows over time. These findings are largely consistent across both student samples. In sum, even after controlling for a wide range of factors, including socioeconomic background, gender, and migration status, resilient students receive better grades, tend to attain higher qualifications, and report higher life satisfaction, whereas we find no association with test scores.