The reciprocal relationship between academic resilience and emotional engagement of students and the effects of participating in the Educational Welfare Priority Support Project in Korea: Autoregressive cross-lagged modeling

Rapid economic growth in Korean society has widened the social and educational gaps among children. This study examines the reciprocal relationship between academic resilience and emotional engagement and the effect of participation in Korea's Educational Welfare Priority Project from a longitudinal perspective. Elementary and middle schools were studied for three years (2015-2017), with 820 students involved in the first year, 911 in the second, and 837 in the third. The results show that academic resilience predicted emotional engagement at a later time point only for project participants, but emotional engagement did not predict academic resilience. This study reveals the importance of psychological resources, such as academic resilience, for disadvantaged students and has implications for educational welfare policies.