May 16, 2023

Consider and explore three articles and studies on resilience in educational settings that are scholarly. ?For example, sources/articles may include research studies, a

Consider and explore three articles and studies on resilience in educational settings that are scholarly. For example, sources/articles may include research studies, a meta-analysis of research, or comprehensive literature review. See attached one reference to use. See attached template.

CHAPTER 2

Introducing Risk and Resilience in Education

In this chapter the concept of resilience is explored within an educational

context. The chapter starts by examining the paradigm shift that took place in

moving from risk to resilience and how the problems with the former have led to

the emergence of the latter: a model emphasising growth and strength develop-

ment. Another shift in the definition of educational resilience is then proposed.

Resilience is construed within a ‘universal’ perspective, focusing on common pro-

cesses that promote positive social and academic behaviours among normally

developing children and young people as well as those who may be at risk in their

development. The chapter concludes with a contextual and universal definition

of educational resilience.

RISK

St Mark’s Primary School is situated in a relatively socially disadvantaged region

in Malta. In the early 1980s the school had 350 students, the great majority

coming from the low socio-economic group. The school was struggling with

high rates of illiteracy, absenteeism and misbehaviour, as well as the parents’ lack

of cooperation and occasional abuse of staff. Teacher stress was very marked,

with a high turnover of staff every year. St Mark’s was considered a failing school,

and the pupils attending the school were at risk of educational failure. As part of

the Education Priority Areas’ policy at the time, the local education authority

(LEA) provided extra funding and support to the school to reduce disaffection

and increase attendance and achievement. More staff were assigned to the school,

including more teachers, so that classrooms could be reduced in size. An addi-

tional assistant head was appointed, together with extra support staff such as

learning support teachers and classroom assistants. More regular service from

educational psychologists, educational social workers, school counsellors and

Cefai, Carmel. Promoting Resilience in the Classroom : A Guide to Developing Pupils' Emotional and Cognitive Skills, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ncent-ebooks/detail.action?docID=350371. Created from ncent-ebooks on 2023-05-15 15:40:41.

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school doctors and nurses was made available to the school. A welfare fund was

set up to address the basic needs of some of the pupils and their families, such as

the provision of free uniforms, stationery, textbooks and lunches. In some cases,

financial assistance was provided to the families themselves, who were also

receiving assistance from the social workers. The complementary teaching room

was furnished with state-of-the-art resources, and an office was opened for the

support professionals visiting the school. The school environment was also

enhanced with new furniture, more comfortable classrooms and improved play

facilities.

The above example illustrates how earlier approaches to the educational

success and failure of school children have largely been focused on the

identification of risk factors with their adverse effects on development, and the

introduction of measures to counteract such effects. Within such a perspective

children and young people coming from socio-economically deprived

backgrounds, ethnic minorities or adverse family circumstances are considered as

being at risk in their development and success at school. The term ‘at risk’ is a

broad one, with numerous factors being considered as likely to compromise

children’s development, such as poverty, abuse and neglect, developmental

disability, and parental illness or psychopathology. In education it usually refers

to children and young people who are at risk of school failure by virtue of coming

from a disadvantaged background such as a deprived socio-economic

background, region, ethnic status, family circumstances and language

(Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 1995).

The main focus of such an approach has been to identify the factors that put

pupils’ success in school at risk and then to remedy and/or prevent such factors

(cf. ‘fixing kids’ approach). As illustrated above, a common practice has been to

provide additional funding to schools which have a preponderance of pupils

coming from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds, such as pupils eligible

for free lunch or whose parents were in receipt of unemployment benefits.

The risk model in education has come under increasing scrutiny in recent

years. Children and young people have been found to develop successfully

despite risk and adversity, and what may be an obstacle to development for one

child may be an opportunity for another (Liddle 1994; Semmens 1999).

Individual children may be considered at risk when in actual fact they are not.

Expectations for entire groups of children may be suppressed, while learning and

behaviour problems may be interpreted as related to individual deficits or the

group’s ‘culture of poverty’ (Catterall 1998). A risk orientation is also likely to

lead to the labelling of children, families and communities because of the

children’s difficulties while ignoring those characteristics of the school context

which may fail to promote children’s cognitive and social development. Finally,

the provision of extra resources to schools considered at risk has not necessarily

20 PROMOTING RESILIENCE IN THE CLASSROOM

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been accompanied by marked improvements in expected outcomes. For instance,

Cappella and Weinstein (2001), making use of a national, longitudinal database,

found that, while 15 per cent of the at-risk group (pupils coming from

disadvantaged backgrounds) improved their reading performance significantly

over their secondary school years, the remaining 85 per cent either dropped out

of school or remained in the lowest or basic achievement level. As Pianta and

Walsh (1998, p.408) put it, ‘we have not been very successful at helping poor

children succeed in school…despite decades of intervention programmes,

substantial success stories have been few’.

Despite the definition and redefinition of ‘at risk’, one thing which has remained constant is the belief that some parents have failed their children, reflecting deep seated biases against women, the poor and ethnic groups. (Lubeck and Garrett 1990, p.327)

RESILIENCE

It was the failure of the risk model to explain success and failure at school ade-

quately that led to a paradigm shift towards models of resilience and competence

enhancement. Both the risk and resilience perspectives are concerned with

understanding what helps children and young people to do well at school.

However, while for the former this represents problem avoidance, the latter is

concerned with wellbeing and health in addition to dysfunction (Luthar,

Cicchetti and Becker 2000; Waxman, Brown and Chang 2004). It shifted the

focus from deficit and disadvantage to growth and strength development. It asks

‘What makes children in difficulty achieve and be successful?’ rather than ‘What

prevents children in difficulty from succeeding?’ Through the study of children

and young people who managed to thrive and be successful at school despite

negative circumstances in their lives, the resilience perspective has led to a recon-

sideration of the ways in which schools can foster success in children and young

people (Brown, D’Emidio-Caston and Benard 2001; Henderson and Milstein

1996). It suggested that we may be more effective in supporting children’s and

young people’s development and wellbeing by focusing on their strengths rather

than on their weaknesses.

There are various definitions of resilience, but a common theme in most

definitions is that of competence and success despite severe and prolonged

adversity and disadvantage (Luthar et al. 2000). Benard (1991) describes

resilience as a set of qualities or protective mechanisms that give rise to successful

adaptation despite the presence of high-risk factors during the course of

development. Educational resilience studies have mainly concentrated on the

academic achievement of children coming from adverse environments, such as

INTRODUCING RISK AND RESILIENCE IN EDUCATION 21

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poverty, the inner city and ethnic minorities. The early studies of the 1970s

construed resilience in terms of individual invulnerability, and focused on

individual characteristics, such as problem-solving skills and stress resistance,

which ‘harden’ children and young people growing up in a difficult environment

and enable them to achieve success (Anthony 1974; Garmezy 1971). As later

studies were to show, however, positive outcomes in the face of adverse

circumstances are also influenced by other processes besides individual

characteristics, including the family, the school and the community. Development

is the result of the dynamic interactions between the various systems impinging

on the child’s life (Bronfenbrenner 1979), and it is the interaction between the

child and his or her environment that finally determines the adaptive process.

The key to developing resiliency in children is opportunities, both plenti- ful and meaningful. Opportunities to rest from resisting a hostile environ- ment, opportunities to explore in safety and security, opportunities to believe and to dream. (Katz 1977, as quoted in Condly 2006, p.228)

The notion of invulnerability gradually gave way to that of resilience, and the

earlier focus on individual characteristics subsequently changed to the identifica-

tion of protective factors that moderated the impact of risk factors (Garmezy and

Rutter 1983; Garmezy, Masten and Tellegen 1984; Werner 1990). Seminal

studies such as those by Werner and Smith (1988, 1992) and Garmezy and

Rutter (1983) found that, despite the high-risk environments in which their par-

ticipants grew up, the majority developed into healthy, successful young adults.

They reported that protective factors have a stronger impact on children’s devel-

opment than risk factors. Subsequent literature identified three broad sets of

factors that protected vulnerable children and facilitated their development into

competent and autonomous young adults. These are: the dispositional attributes

of the individual (social competence, problem-solving skills, autonomy and a

sense of purpose); the family, particularly in the early years; and external support

systems such as the school. It is the interactions of these three protective systems

in the child’s life that eventually lead to success in the face of adversity (Dent and

Cameron 2003; Pianta and Walsh 1998; Wang and Haertel 1995). Individuals

with high levels of these personal and social protective factors are thus more

effective in coping with adversity than individuals with lower levels of protec-

tion.

Resilience is a dynamic process that occurs in a context and is the result of the

person in interaction with his or her environment (Rutter 1991). Contexts such as

home, community, schools and classrooms have been shown to provide

protection to children and young people at risk and to direct their development

towards positive and healthy pathways (Crosnoe and Elder 2004; Pianta and

22 PROMOTING RESILIENCE IN THE CLASSROOM

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Walsh 1998; Rees and Bailey 2003; Schoon 2006). Bronfenbrenner’s (1979)

ecological systems theory, with its representation of the developing individual

embedded in a series of nested systems, provides a useful framework for

analysing the dynamics of resilience-promoting contexts such as schools. Schools

provide a major and continuing context for cognitive and socio-emotional

development. They have significant and sustained contact with most children and

young people during the formative years of personality development, and thus

they can be ideal places for cognitive and socio-emotional development to be

nurtured and supported. Rutter (1991) argues that the positive effects of school

experience seem most evident among pupils who are vulnerable and have few

other supports. Given that schools are one of the few institutions available to all

children and young people, they are ideally placed to reach vulnerable pupils

whom it may be difficult to access in other settings.

The resilience literature agrees on three key school qualities which have been

found to promote positive academic and social outcomes, and compensate for

risk factors such as socio-economic disadvantage (Benard 1991; Pianta and

Walsh 1998; Rees and Bailey 2003):

INTRODUCING RISK AND RESILIENCE IN EDUCATION 23

Case study 2.1 A study of resilience

Emmy Werner and Ruth Smith began their pioneering longitudinal study on resilience back in 1963 and their study is still going on today. They began their investigation into the impact of social disadvantage on development over the lifespan among a group of 600 individuals living in Hawaii. All the participants were drawn from socio-economically impoverished backgrounds. At the age of 32, the majority (70%) had developed into healthy and successful young adults despite the high-risk environments in which they grew up. The study suggested that protective factors, both internal and external, had a stronger impact on children’s developmental trajectory than risk factors. It identified three sets of factors that protected the individuals from the adverse effects of their negative life circumstances and directed their development towards more positive trajectories. These were: the dispositional attributes of the individual such as sociability and competence in communication skills; affectional ties within the family, providing emotional support in times of stress; and supportive and rewarding external support systems, such as school and work (Werner and Smith 1988, 1992).

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1. Caring relationships between pupils and teachers based on teacher concern, care, respect and support towards the pupils. An ‘ethic of caring’ (Noddings 1992) broadens such relationships beyond the classroom walls to include caring pupil–pupil, teacher–teacher and teacher–parent relationships.

2. High expectations for pupils to do well through teacher practices which are child-centred, use pupils’ own strengths and interests, and tap their intrinsic motivation for learning.

3. Pupils’ meaningful involvement and responsibility, with opportunities to express opinions, make choices, solve problems and work with and help others in a caring and healthy environment.

Table 2.1 at the end of the chapter presents a number of educational resilience

studies that have examined the role of schools and classrooms as resilience-

enhancing contexts for pupils coming from adverse social backgrounds.

RESILIENCE FOR ALL: A UNIVERSAL PERSPECTIVE

Schools must do better for all our students…they all need to find and nurture relationships, see possibilities and potentials… [we need] to build a climate and a process within that climate that works to benefit all. (Brown et al. 2001, p.xi–xii)

Most of the current research on educational resilience has focused predominantly

on academic success in the context of risk, particularly the achievement of pupils

from minority, low-level socio-economic families and communities. There have

been calls, however, to broaden the construct beyond this ‘specifist’ approach to

include the wellbeing of all school children within a universal perspective of

resilience (Battistisch 2001; Brown 2004; Carter and Doyle 2006; Cefai 2007;

Poulou 2007). A universal approach to resilience focuses on common processes

promoting positive academic and social behaviours among all pupils. Schools

and classrooms are organised in such a way as to match the developmental needs

of all their members, both those at risk and those who are not. Recent research

suggests that factors which benefit children in adversity, such as caring and sup-

portive relationships, an accessible and meaningful curriculum, and active partici-

pation in the classroom, have been found to benefit normally developing children

as well (Solomon et al. 1997b, 2000). On the other hand, resilience builds upon

typical psychosocial processes involved in the development of competence. The

fundamental systems that generally foster competence in development, such as

caring classroom relationships, positive academic beliefs and high expectations,

24 PROMOTING RESILIENCE IN THE CLASSROOM

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operate in adverse circumstances as well, protecting the child or counteracting the

threats to development (Masten and Coatsworth 1998; Rees and Bailey 2003).

Another argument for a universal perspective is that cross-curricular and

context-focused approaches appear to be more effective in promoting

socio-emotional and academic competence than off-the-shelf intervention

programmes targeting specific groups (Elias and Weissberg 2000; Pianta and

Walsh 1998; Waxman et al. 2004). Programmes such as Socio-Emotional Learning

in the USA (Elias and Weissberg 2000) and the Social and Emotional Aspects of

Learning in the UK (Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) 2004)

offer promising frameworks in this respect (Poulou 2007).

Within a universal model of resilience, schools and classrooms can adopt

processes that will promote social and academic development among both at-risk

pupils and those who are developing normally. These processes are grounded in

the typical mechanisms involved in the development of social and academic

competence. Caring classroom relationships, meaningful engagement, shared

values and a sense of belonging have consistently been shown to be related to

positive academic and social outcomes among pupils, including those considered

at risk of school failure and psychosocial difficulties (Battistisch et al. 1995;

Catalano and Hawkins 1996; Solomon et al. 1997a). Schools and classrooms are

social systems with the potential to support the growth and wellbeing of all. They

may provide a protective environment for vulnerable children and young people,

while at the same time enhancing the development of the other normally

developing pupils as well. This perspective avoids the differentiation and

specialisation of support that may lead to further stress among vulnerable

children (Pianta and Walsh 1998) and to the possibility of the stigmatisation and

labelling of ‘non-resilient’ children (Waxman et al. 2004), with schools

increasing risk rather than reducing it.

Most studies define the outcome of resilience as academic success on the

basis of examination performance. However, there are technical and

methodological problems in measuring school success solely on the basis of

grades and tests. Even more problematic is the definition of educational resilience

as academic achievement. Pupils may be achieving while at the same time facing

considerable problems in social competence, problem solving and autonomous

learning (Pianta and Walsh 1998). Moreover, such a definition provides a very

limited view of what education is about, focusing on teaching and performance

rather than on pupils and learning (Watkins 2001). It hinders the promotion of

pupils’ development as caring and responsible citizens (Nicholls 1989) and as

competent, self-directed learners (Watkins et al. 2002). It also makes it impossible

for a substantial number of pupils to succeed and be ‘resilient’.

With this in mind, educational resilience in this book is defined as

‘socio-emotional competence and educational engagement in the classroom’.

INTRODUCING RISK AND RESILIENCE IN EDUCATION 25

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Educational engagement is based on Newman, Wehlage and Lamborn’s (1992)

term ‘student engagement’ and refers to positive academic attitudes, motivation

to achieve and to learn, and enjoyment of class and school. Socio-emotional

competence, on the other hand, generally refers to the social and communicative

skills children use to cultivate relationships with adults and peers to succeed in an

environment. These include helping and working collaboratively with peers,

autonomy and problem-solving skills. This ability is usually defined in terms of

age-appropriate skills within socially relevant contexts. There appears to be some

broad consensus of what constitutes desirable behaviours, such as establishing

and maintaining a range of positive social behaviours, refraining from harming

others, contributing collaboratively to peer group and school, engaging in

behaviours which enhance and protect health, and avoiding behaviours with

serious negative consequences for the individual or others or both (Topping,

Bremner and Holmes 2000)

Educational resilience in this book is construed as a dynamic, contextual

phenomenon rather than a fixed, individual characteristic. In this respect, it can

be built and enhanced within the contexts in which children and young people

operate, such as the classroom. The definition is positive and inclusive, it focuses

on learning rather than achievement, and is open to all rather than limited to a

select few. It is global and holistic, focusing both on the cognitive and on the

affective elements of children’s and young people’s development. It has also a

proactive, universal dimension, moving away from risk towards classrooms

operating as health-promoting and competence-enhancing contexts for all their

pupils.

CONCLUSI

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Consider and explore three articles and studies on resilience in educational settings that are scholarly. ?For example, sources/articles may include research studies, a

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