Akademik sağlamlık : yoksulluk içindeki sekizinci sınıf öğrencilerinin akademik başarılarına katkıda bulunan koruyucu faktörlerin incelenmesi.

The purpose of the present study is to assess the potential individual characteristics and environmental protective factors that promote academic resilience among impoverished eighth grade elementary school students in Turkey. The sample consisted of 872 (439 girls, 433 boys) students enrolled in 6 low SES inner-city public elementary schools in Ankara. Five instruments, Demographic Data Form, Resilience and Youth Development Module (RYDM), Scholastic Competence Scale (SCS), Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS), and Nowicki-Strickland Locus of Control Scale (N-SLCS) were used in the present study. Grade point averages (6th, 7th and 8th grades) of students were used as the measure of Academic Achievement. Exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were used to analyze the data. The results of the present study revealed that home high expectations, school caring relationships and high expectations, along with the peer caring relationships were the prominent external protective factors that predicted academic resilience for the adolescents in poverty. Considering the internal protective factors, having positive self-perceptions about one̕s academic abilities, high educational aspirations, having empathic understanding, internal locus of control and being hopeful for the future were positively linked with the academic resilience of adolescents in poverty. Conversely, the external factors of home caring relationships, community caring relationships and high expectations, and peer high expectations, and internal factor of problem solving ability were negatively linked with academic resilience. These factors seem to be vulnerability factors for impoverished Turkish adolescents although they are generally accepted as the protective ones.Ph.D. - Doctoral Progra