Every year the same questions in education appear again and again.
One question I’ve been wrestling with is about resilience. Specifically, “are our students resilient enough”? or “How can we make our students more resilient?”
I suppose the answer differs, depending on the expectations we have, the age or maturity of the students, or perhaps even our own subjective perceptions of what it means to be “resilient”.
But, however, you look at it, more and more is being expected by exam boards, universities and employers. Just to keep pace with previous cohorts, students need to achieve ever-increasing exam scores.
To do this, they must study in more depth and in greater breadth.
But how can they manage such a monumental task?
The answer: resilience. In local thought, we often link resilience to achievements.
When we think of examples of resilience, adults and their achievements may come to mind first.
For example, we might visualise resilience with the image of a single parent of two children who always smiles despite financial stress.
Maybe it is the CEO who is working 70 hours a week and still finds the energy to keep their business growing. Indeed, children are the tabula rasa of society.
Their brains are flexible and develop quickly at a young age.
This capacity to learn is also children’s biggest vulnerability: early experiences in life will shape the way they relate to others and themselves for the rest of their lives.
This is great if young experiences center around love, safety, and security.
Unfortunately, not all children have nurturing condition.
Social, cultural, racial and economic factors influence opportunities and experiences for children.
Certain family systems perpetuate undesirable behavioral patterns that might hinder a child’s development.
Eventually, this can amount to social and psychological problems.
Many children become resilient when faced with adversity.
But resilience does not have to stem from trauma; it can also grow from supportive home environments and classrooms.
Classroom dynamics and teaching methods can shape a classroom culture of resiliency.
School plays a huge role in children’s lives, a setting in which they spend at least 15,000 hours on average (Rutter, Maughan, Mortimore, Ouston & Smith, 1979). As Namka (2014) illustrates, a school may be the only haven they have.
As one teenager partaking in her research acknowledges, the: “Only positive adult attention I got was in school from some of the teachers.
“I knew which teachers liked me and I learned more from them. At home, there weren’t any adults who were interested in me so school became my favorite place to be.”
When resiliency is embedded in the classroom culture, teachers transform the lives of students.
In the past, teachers gave a lot of attention to deficit-based approaches, where disciplinary measures and punishment were used to manage behavioral problems (Cahill, Beadle, Farrelly, Forster, & Smith, 2014).
Times are changing. A new approach, influenced by positive psychologists, highlights a strength-based model, with much classroom success.
Instead of focusing on undesirable traits, teachers are asked to focus on student’s strengths, while promoting well-being and resilience (Cahill, Beadle, Farrelly, Forster, & Smith, 2014).
One of the overall aims of positive psychology is to allow people’s strengths and capacities to shine through their weaknesses or vulnerabilities (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi 2000).
In the school setting, this can be achieved when the following elements are incorporated:
- A safe, stable and secure physical environment;
- A psychologically safe space;
- Supportive relationships and a tight knit community;
- A sense of belonging and identification;
- Positive social norms;
- Opportunities for skill-building, decision-making, and planning; and
- Social and cultural integration of the family and the community.
Once combined, these elements provide an ideal context for children to thrive in the learning process and in their social
and psychological inner lives (Bernard,
2004).
A classroom culture of resiliency is not impossible.
We can learn from many examples of this concept also extends beyond the classroom.
For teachers, responses and questions that encourage growth will help their class overcome difficult tasks and moments.
Well-phrased questions may help students perceive a situation as a growth based opportunity.
These questions include:
- What did you learn during this task? In what way was it difficult?
- Did you make any mistakes? If so, which ones?
- What skills did you have to use during this activity? Had you used any of these previously?
- If you had to start it all over again, would you do anything differently next time?
- What advice would you give a student just starting this task?
- “You can’t do it… yet”.
Besides the social norms we adopt, the stories we tell ourselves also determine our life perspective.
Personal beliefs, towards ourselves and what we view as possible, are made solid by the narratives we hold true. We can think
of this as the narrative of “I” inside of our heads.
Our identity exists at the intersection of these personal narratives and our social reality.
Childhood molds a lot of our core ideas and habits.
Every interaction or relationship has an impact on us, including dynamics between parents, close relatives, siblings, and teachers.
How a student responds emotionally to a situation may be a relic of childhood experiences.
Because of this, traumatic scenarios in childhood can have large consequences in adulthood.
This also applies pressure to parenthood, and cultures differ in expectations of how parents might respond to stressors.
Parental beliefs about whether the world is a safe place, or whether others are trustworthy, can also shape how children experience situations.
Culture, like parenting, influences the formation of resilience in children.
Additionally, norms and social constructs define specific parameters that either maximise or minimise a child’s potential for
well-being, success, and happiness.
What would a world look like that shared the classroom values of resilience?
How do we create a culture of resiliency that thrives within and beyond the classroom walls?
Perhaps by starting with changing our classroom and school cultures, we can begin creating microcosms of perseverance through challenges.
- Ravinesh Prasad is the lecturer in Education at the School of Education, College of Humanities and Education, Fiji National University. The views expressed are his and do not reflect the views of this newspaper.
