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Table 1
Dual Enrollment Totals in Texas

While the academic benefits of dual credit are well documented (Alsup & Depenhart, 2020; Gallardo, 2024; Giani et al., 2014; Henneberger et al., 2022; Lee et al., 2022), less attention has been given to how students themselves perceive their readiness for college after completing these courses (Bucci & Simpson, 2022). In interviews with first-year community college students, the most stressful moments discussed were not always about the content of a class. They were often about the friction points that rarely show up in course descriptions, such as logins that fail, portals that confuse, emails that go unanswered, and resources that exist in theory but are invisible in practice. When students don’t know the next step, resilience becomes a coin toss. The question isn’t whether dual credit helps students start college early; the question is whether we are building the transition skills that make that head start durable once students hit real-world barriers. Educational resilience is not grit. It is a teachable set of strategies for navigating systems, seeking help, and activating resources before small problems become stop-out moments. The good news is that schools and colleges can design structures for this kind of resilience, and they don’t need to wait for a major reform to start.

Educational Resilience, Operationalized

Wang et al. (1997) defines educational resilience as the “heightened likelihood of educational success despite personal vulnerabilities and adversities brought about by environmental conditions and experiences.” It is also described as the capacity of a system to adapt successfully to challenges that threaten functioning or development. In schools, that system includes students, peers, educators, and the institutional structures that shape access to learning and support. In practical terms, resilience shows up when a student can respond to a challenge with a workable next step: identify the problem, locate the right support, and follow through. That is why resilience in education is not just a personal quality; it is also a product of supportive environments and accessible pathways.

These definitions matter because many readiness conversations are dominated by measurable metrics like credits, grades, and test scores. While these indicators are important, they are incomplete. Conley’s (2007) widely used Four Key Dimensions of College and Career Readiness argues that readiness includes multiple dimensions, such as cognitive strategies; content knowledge; learning skills and techniques; and transition knowledge and skills. Research further suggests that college readiness is a multidimensional construct requiring advanced thinking skills, discipline-specific knowledge, and self-regulatory behaviors, supported through programs that strengthen soft skills, clarify pathways, and build students’ understanding of college expectations (Detgen et al., 2021; Green et al., 2021).

What Students Say the Transition Actually Requires

Across student narratives, readiness repeatedly looks like “transition knowledge” in action. It includes understanding institutional processes, managing time without constant reminders, and knowing how to communicate with instructors. Students can feel academically capable and still stumble because they don’t know how to use the tools of college life. When those pathways are unclear, students burn energy on bureaucracy instead of learning, especially when it comes to the transition period from high school to college. One student described the transition as awful, saying, “To actually register for being a first-year student and getting everything in line for that was horrendous.” Another student described the transition, saying, “I was walking into it not blindly in like the academic way, but blindly as in socially and resource-ly. I didn’t really know everything that a college can do for you.… I’ve never had that experience without it being myself.”

Students also described a problem that is easy to underestimate: help-seeking in college is not the same as help-seeking in high school. In online and hybrid settings, the “raise your hand” moment disappears. Questions become emails, and emails can meandelays. Delays can become anxiety, procrastination, and missed work. Without explicit norms about how to ask, when to follow up, and what to do when there is no response, students interpret silence as failure and carry the stress alone. One student described email communications as frustrating, saying, “The [professor] would make changes, but wouldn’t respond to let you know.… You would just be kind of freaking out.” Another described the disconnect, saying, “You don’t have someone there in front of you to ask questions. You have to email,… and then they may not respond that day.”

This is where Schlossberg’s Transition Theory (1981) is useful as an explanatory lens. Schlossberg emphasizes that successful adaptation depends not only on the support available but also on the strategies a person uses to cope with transition. Students may have resources, but they still struggle if they do not know how to activate those resources. In other words, resilience fails not only when support is absent but when the “activation strategy” is missing. One student specifically mentions this in a piece of advice, saying, “Make it known that you can actually talk to your professor in person.”

The Hidden Curriculum of Resiliency

We often treat the “hidden curriculum” of college as something students will figure out with time, but dual credit coursework and the first semester in college is not a neutral runway. It is a narrow window in which small barriers can snowball. A single records issue can derail registration. A single platform issue can block access to coursework. A single unanswered message can halt course progress and delay assignments. If resilience is the ability to recover, then the hidden curriculum is where recovery must be designed, not assumed. As Beard et al. (2023) suggests, this requires the implementation of structures that explicitly teach students how to seek help, navigate institutional systems, and advocate for their needs, rather than leaving them to figure it out on their own.

The implication is not that students lack motivation, but that institutions can reduce avoidable friction and teach students how to respond when friction occurs. This shifts the narrative from “students should be tougher” to “systems should be clearer, and students should be taught how to navigate them.” This is a resilience stance as well as an equity stance. Students with family members who have navigated college often inherit informal scripts that first-generation students may not have. Consistent with this, Hawthorne and Young (2019) suggest that first-generation transfer students often report lower satisfaction with the college environment and weaker connections to faculty and peers, highlighting the need for institutions to intentionally build clarity, support, and belonging into the student experience.

A Practical Solution: GO Kit for Transition Readiness

One way to operationalize resilience is to build a simple, student-facing “GO Kit” grounded in Conley’s transition knowledge and skills. The Go Kit is not a new class or a heavy program. It is a short readiness check paired with targeted, just-in-time guidance providing a clear set of next steps for common barriers. Its purpose is multi-faceted, with the primary goal of moving students from “I hope this works out” to “I know what to do next.” A GO Kit can be delivered before matriculation, when dual credit seniors are still connected to familiar adults and routines. It can also be desi gned to trigger proactive outreach without stigmatizing students. The point is not to label students as “at risk, ” but to identify where they feel uncertain and respond with clarity and connection. Resilience grows faster when support is visible, timely, and actionable. Following are six steps that can be taken by institutions to build and develop a more resilient student body.

1. Redefine resilience as activation, not toughness or grit.
   Measure resilience with behavioral indicators: Can students name who to contact? Can they access platforms? Can they complete the next step within 24-48 hours?
2. Teach the “GO” skills explicitly.
   Do not assume students know how to use the school’s various portals (such as the LMS and college email) or how deadlines work. Make transition knowledge part of readiness, not an afterthought.
3. Normalize help-seeking with scripts and timelines.
   Provide short templates for contacting instructors and staff, including what to include in a message, how long to wait, and what to do next if there is no response.
4. Deploy a GO Kit Readiness Check before students arrive.
   Ask dual credit seniors a small set of questions about systems confidence, resource awareness, and help-seeking comfort. Use responses to route proactive support and targeted guidance.
5. Treat communication as a resilience intervention.
   If students cannot see supports, supports do not exist. Use segmented messaging that points to a specific next step or action, not just a list of offices or services offered.
6. Learn partner-by-partner.
   Aggregate readiness gaps by high school partners to identify where students consistently report low transition readiness. Use that insight to improve supports and messaging where they are most needed.

Wrapping Resiliency

Dual credit can accelerate the start of college, but resilience determines whether students stay on the road when the transition gets bumpy. If we keep defining resilience among educators as grit, we will continue shifting blame to students for problems that are often structural and solvable. If we define resilience as activation, we can build it by teaching transition knowledge, normalizing help-seeking, and making pathways visible through a simple Go Kit approach that turns uncertainty into next steps.

More ÂÒÂ×ÊÓƵ

Daniel McLemore graduating from ÂÒÂ×ÊÓƵ in May 2026 with a doctorate in educational leadership.  He is the Director of Marketing, Communications & Community Relations at Lamar State College Orange, where he leads institutional branding, strategic communications, and digital engagement initiatives that support one of the fastest-growing two-year colleges in Texas. Daniel’s research focuses on how dual credit and early college experiences shape students’ readiness for postsecondary coursework, particularly during the transition from high school to community college. His work examines how students interpret their academic preparation, navigate institutional expectations, and identify the resources that support persistence in the first year of college. Grounded in the context of two-year colleges in Southeast Texas, his research aims to inform institutional practices that reduce transition barriers and strengthen pathways to student success.
dtmclemore@lamar.edu Expertise: Dual Credit / Dual Enrollment; College Readiness; Postsecondary Transition.

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