Bibliotherapy as a hope-building tool in educational settings

Abstract

ABSTRACTFormal and non-formal settings of education are called for action in matter of creating hopeful places for children, since hope is one of the most powerful psychological predictors of success in youth. It is what enables people to set-valued goals, to see the means to achieve those goals, and to find the drive to make those goals become a reality. To promote hope we assess bibliotherapy as a possible tool, presenting an intervention protocol named “Opening doors to the future through reading and reflection.” This intervention was implemented with 173 children, aged between 7 and 12 years. The overall results show that the bibliotherapy protocol was effective in instilling the levels of hopeful thinking among children and increasing the awareness of hope. Therefore, this work gathers practical guidelines from a practitioner perspective, which can further help design interventions that instill hope in both children and adolescents.