Developing students' resilience during the crisis: A moderated model linking college support, study demands, student resilience, and students' change-oriented behaviours

Abstract

This study focuses on student resilience during the COVID-19 crisis, a key factor for students' progress, and future careers. It does so by introducing the job demands and resources (JDR) model, and the social exchange theory (SET), widely adopted in the management literature in the education field to better understand student experience management in the higher education context. In past research, limited attention has been given to student resilience through the lens of management theories such as JDR and SET, and college support as a factor that develops student resilience has been scarcely observed. Data were collected from 1435 students in a large Irish university during the lockdown period due to COVID-19 in 2020. The findings reveal that college support, as a resource, develops students' resilience (even in the presence of higher study demands), which in turn decreases their affective response to crisis, and increases their adaptive study performance, and commitment to the move to online learning. This research suggests that colleges need to balance their support and demands towards students during the crisis in facilitating students to develop their own resilience and provides valuable insights for higher education sector to develop students' resilience during crisis.