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Resiliency
Resiliency or resilience is the ability to “bounce back” from a stressful or traumatic experience. Resiliency has been an issue in psychology and counseling for years. More recently, it has become a topic of increasing interest to educators generally. Discovering what makes an individual resilient and learning how to develop conditions in schools to help students and staff become more resilient are current interests of administrators. In addition, administrators themselves are assessing their own resiliency and trying to find ways to increase their resiliency as the roles of school and district leaders become more and more complex and stressful.
The ability to adapt or adjust becomes of particular importance as the research accumulates indicating that those people who are resilient will be more likely to overcome adversity and cope with and/or adapt to change. A major factor in resilient adaptation is good relationships. Investigators have consistently pointed to the critical importance of strong connections with at least one supportive adult: in many instances a primary caregiver, who is among the earliest, most proximal, and most enduring of socializing influences. Sound interpersonal relationship in the early years can foster the growth of effective coping skills that, in turn, can help children in managing assorted adversities subsequently encountered in life.
Of particular interest to educators is the consistent finding that relationships with individuals outside the family can positively influence the development of resiliency. Neighborhood networks and/or home-visit interventions can be invaluable in helping parents cope with their own stressors and consequently avoiding the transfer of personal stress to their own children. Teachers and informal mentors in the community can be just as valuable as support systems as family members. If such relationships reach a critical point, these connections can compensate greatly for difficult family situations.
Development of Resilience
Rather consistently, studies on resilience point to a common set of findings regarding what influences the development of resilience. There appear to be three major categories of protective factors: individual attributes, such as good intellectual skills, positive temperament, and positive views of the self; family qualities, such as high warmth, cohesion, expectations, and involvement; and supportive systems outside the family, such as strong social networks or good schools.
A list of attributes of individuals and their contexts often associated with resilience have been developed. They include cognitive abilities (IQ scores, attention skills, executive functioning skills), self-perceptions of competence, worth, confidence (self-efficacy, selfesteem), temperament and personality (adaptability, sociability), self-regulation skills (impulse control, affect and arousal regulation), and a positive outlook on life (hopefulness, beliefs that life has meaning, faith) as examples in the individual differences perspective. In the area of relationships, some examples include parenting quality (including warmth, structure and monitoring, expectations), close relationships with competent adults (parents, relatives, mentors), and connections to prosocial and rule-abiding peers (among older children). As for community resources and opportunities, good schools, connections to prosocial organizations (such as clubs or religious groups), neighborhood quality (public safety, collective supervision, libraries, recreation centers), and quality of social services and health care are offered.
While Jerry Patterson's 2001 work addresses school administrators rather than children and adolescents, his point that resilience is not a short-term characteristic that changes daily but a capacity individuals have to move ahead under adversity is important, regardless of developmental stage. Like those who have researched resiliency in children, Patterson declares that there is no single, magic checklist for strengthening resilience. He does, however, identify two central points that can be used as guides. First, keep in mind that it is not so much what you do, it is how you think about what you do that makes all the difference. Second, keep in mind that people don't choose to be nonresilient. They simply choose not to do what it takes to become resilient.
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