Educational school resilience for adolescents in disadvantaged homes and neighborhoods: effects of resourses in the family and school environment.

When students succeed academically, despite exposure to adverse life circumstances, this is termed educational resilience (Wang et al. , 1998). The combination of how a student interacts with resources in the environment can change the academic trajectory. Adverse life circumstances are refereed to different types of stressors: low socioeconomic status, disadvantaged homes and neighborhoods, family conflict, relocation, divorce, violence, ethnic diversity. Literature showed the role of some protective factors that are able to buffer the effects of these stressors on academic career. These factors include individual personality characteristics, family environment, and support from sources outside of the family (i.e. peers, teachers, and school and community involvement). Most of the studies tested the moderating role of single environment instead of testing different mechanisms (additive, synergistic, and threshold effects) through which the different protective environments can interact. The present study try to answer to this gap in the literature, testing whether educational resilience for youth in disadvantaged homes and neighborhoods (characterized by low income level, low parent educational level, low perception of the safety of neighborhood) can be fostered by the interaction of family social support (defined by family communication, parent involvement and parent monitoring) and teacher support