Resiliency, especially academic resiliency, is a topic of research in educational science. Students who are from disadvantaged background draw a huge attention. Among the factors that are associated with disadvantaged students are low socio-economic level of individuals and their families; loss of parent or parents, violence at home or in the neighbourhood, and antisocial and criminal behaviour of the individual and chronic illnesses of him or her.

Although there is an accumulation of literature in resiliency, most of the studies focus on students. However, there may be significant information that can be extract from teachers. For those who want to work on resiliency, OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) provides large-scale data. This study focuses on academic resiliency using science literacy of 15-years old Turkish students. Using socio-economic indicators of PISA, academically resilient students were defined. Then using multiple linear regression, factors such as opinions about school’s capacity to provide instruction hindered, job satisfaction, instructional practices were examined to assess their ability to predict resilient students’ science literacy.

Results indicated that teacher is an important agent to predict academic resiliency. Teacher-related variables well predicted achievement level of students. Turkey is one of the countries with the highest ratio of resiliency in PISA cycles. This study is expected to further contribute to the efforts to decrease disadvantages of students.