Structural Equation Modelling of Academic Resilience, Teacher Support, and Science Achievement Among Secondary Students in Rivers State

This study developed and tested a structural model examining the interrelationships among academic resilience, teacher support, and science achievement in secondary schools in Rivers State, Nigeria. Academic resilience, the capacity to maintain strong performance despite adversity, is a theorised mediating construct in the relationship between environmental challenges and educational outcomes, yet its role in Nigerian science education has rarely been modelled structurally. A descriptive structural design was used. Six hundred SS2 students from 20 secondary schools across Port Harcourt, Okrika, and Eleme Local Government Areas were sampled. The Academic Resilience Scale, Teacher Support in Science Scale, and a Science Achievement composite drawn from terminal examination scores were used as latent variable indicators. All scales had Cronbach's Alpha coefficients above 0.80. Structural Equation Modelling was conducted using AMOS 25. The fitted model indicated that teacher support significantly predicted both academic resilience and science achievement, with academic resilience partially mediating the teacher support-achievement pathway. Model fit indices (CFI 0.94, RMSEA 0.05) confirmed acceptable fit. Findings advance Nigerian science education theory by providing empirical grounding for resilience-centred pedagogy and recommend school-level interventions that build teacher-student relational trust and deploy structured resilience development programmes. Keywords: academic resilience, teacher support, science achievement, structural equation modelling, Rivers State.