Fostering Psychosocial Skills: School-Based Promotion of Resiliency in Children and Adolescents

Abstract

This chapter discusses the application of resiliency in school environments. We begin by briefly introducing the constructs of resilience/resiliency as internal and external mechanisms that allow an individual to recover from/overcome adversities. Resilience is described as a non-stigmatizing construct which includes social-emotional intelligence and which is well suited to use in a school environment. Next, the three-factor model of personal resiliency, developed by Prince-Embury, is presented as a working model to simplify the construct into three underlying developmental principles for applications in schools. The three-factor model describes core underlying developmental systems of personal resiliency as sense of mastery, sense of relatedness, and emotional reactivity. The Resiliency Scales for Children and Adolescents are then presented as a tool for preventive screening in schools that employ the three-factor model. A multitiered model for preventive screening is presented using the RSCA index scores of vulnerability and resource to identify students who are most at risk and drilling down to identify specific areas of relative strength and vulnerability. The second part of this chapter provides specific examples of applications of resiliency and related strength-based constructs in schools at different levels of intervention: school-wide/systemic, classroom, and individual.