Role of High School on Creating Academic Resilience: Comparative Study of High School Students in Indonesia and Japan

Schools play an important role in building student resilience for facing global challenges and demands. This comparative study aims to understand the differences as well as the similarities between the practical educations in High School associated with two main issues: (1) how the school program develops student resilience; (2) what values obtained from the program are needed for building student resilience. The research was conducted in SMAN 1 Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and Fukuyama Municipal High School, Japan. The subjects of the research are teachers and students of the chosen schools. The data were collected through questionnaires, active participation, observation sheets, focus group discussion, and documentation. The data collected are those related to the practices and problems of resilience. The research findings reveal the following interesting results: (1) High schools in Indonesia and Japan, both run programs to develop student resilience with academic and non-academic approach based on school vision and mission. The academic approach aims to develop excellent student with high standards in addressing the challenges and demands of globalization, while the non-academic approach is aimed to develop the academic skills and personal skills needed to build the resilience of the students; (2) The values needed for developing academic resilience are self-efficacy, self-confident, discipline, tolerance, self-estimate, physical resilience, commitment, courage in making solutions and decisions, being humanistic, want to be the best, leadership, discipline, commitment, and creative personality.