Speaker
Description
In today’s fast-evolving world, resilience has become an essential trait for overcoming obstacles-especially for Vietnamese students, who navigate immense academic pressures shaped by Confucian traditions and a highly competitive, exam-focused education system. This study explored the relationship between Adversity Quotient® (AQ), a recognized measure of resilience, and academic performance among 236 high school students in Hanoi. The descriptive results revealed that most students exhibited moderately low to moderate AQ, with notably lower scores in the Ownership and Reach dimensions and moderate scores in Control and Endurance. Notably, male students demonstrated higher overall AQ and outperformed females in all dimensions except Ownership, while grade-level differences were generally insignificant apart from Ownership. Importantly, the analysis uncovered a moderate positive correlation between AQ and GPA, with the Reach and Endurance components showing the strongest links to academic performance. Regression results further highlighted that AQ explained 15.6% of the variance in academic performance, underscoring its role as a meaningful predictor of achievement in Vietnam’s demanding educational environment. These insights point to the urgent need for schools to integrate resilience-building programs into their curricula and to provide targeted support that equips students with effective coping strategies, tailored to the distinctive challenges of Vietnam’s exam-oriented, collectivist culture.
Keywords: Adversity Quotient, academic performance, resilience, Vietnamese students
Biography
Do Hai Duong is a student researcher at the Faculty of English Language and Culture (FELC), University of Languages and International Studies (ULIS-VNU), specializing in quantitative studies on educational psychology and language pedagogy. Her research investigates adversity quotient (AQ) as a predictor of academic performance, identifying resilience as a critical mediator of student success in high-pressure environments like Vietnam. Previously, she employed statistical models to analyze the correlation between student engagement and teacher intrinsic motivation, revealing how educators’ psychological drivers shape learning outcomes in Vietnam’s exam-oriented classrooms. Passionate about social-emotional learning (SEL), Hai Duong advocates integrating cultural responsiveness and emotional awareness into TESOL practices to address learner anxiety in teacher-centered instructional settings. A recipient of the ULIS Merit Scholarship and UI AWARD, her interdisciplinary work bridges educational theory, socio-cultural dynamics, and policy analysis to advance equitable pedagogical reforms.