Rising above: what makes a learner resilient?

Abstract

Sometimes, a child from a poor background does well in mathematics despite their relatively adverse educational environment. They are known as resilient learners, young people who attend low socio-economic status public schools, fall within the three lowest quintiles of home socio-economic status, but nevertheless achieve above average scores for mathematics. In 2015, these learners comprised 12.5% of the South African grade 9 school population. Ncamisile Zulu and Dr Mari??tte Visser investigated the characteristics of resilient learners by using the TIMSS 2015 data. The results show that resilient learners are age-appropriate for their grade (i.e. have not repeated grades) and positive about their school, teachers and about learning mathematics.