Predictors of Academic Resilience in Secondary School Students with Hearing Impairment Across North West Nigeria

This study identifies predictors of academic resilience among secondary school students with hearing impairment across selected states in North West Nigeria. Academic resilience, understood as the capacity to achieve positive educational outcomes despite significant adversity, has emerged as a critical construct in special education research, offering a strengths-based counterpoint to deficit-focused perspectives on disability and learning. Students with hearing impairment face multiple adversities including communication barriers, social isolation, and limited access to sign language instruction, yet some demonstrate remarkable academic persistence and achievement. Adopting a cross-sectional correlational design, the study samples two hundred and forty students with hearing impairment from special and integrated secondary schools in Kano, Kaduna, and Sokoto States. Instruments include the Academic Resilience Scale, a Sign Language Proficiency Rating, a social support inventory, and a teacher-rated academic engagement measure. Multiple regression analysis is used to identify the strongest predictors of academic resilience, with variables grouped into individual, relational, and institutional domains. The study fills a gap in the literature by shifting from a risk-focused to a protective-factor framework in analysing deaf student outcomes in Northern Nigeria. Findings are expected to identify sign language proficiency, teacher supportiveness, and parental advocacy as the strongest predictors. Recommendations include investing in sign language instruction quality and developing resilience-building support programmes in North West Nigerian special schools. Keywords: academic resilience, hearing impairment, North West Nigeria, predictors, protective factors.