Resilience in Education

 

During Covid times, with the pandemic impacting education, I blogged about the need for teaching resilience after UNESCO had recognised the importance of resilience as a component of learning, resilience being the ability to succeed despite serious threats or to endure difficulty and recover after stress. At the time, I commented that resilience may be added to UNESCO’s four pillars of learning as one of the 21st Century Skills. Back then, the students were the main concern, academically as well as in terms of social and emotional wellbeing. Internal and external factors have been identified as contributors to student resilience. The internal factors include emotional competence, social competence, and future orientation. The external factors, on the other hand, refer to positive environmental support structures including the home, school, peers, and community. When educators help students “cultivate an approach to life that views obstacles as a critical part of success, we help them develop resilience,” writes Marilyn Price-Mitchell, a highly regarded psychologist. Among the methods of encouraging resilience among students, researchers cite encouraging reflection, modeling learning from mistakes, writing and talking about setbacks and human resilience, and establishing supportive relations with students. Research has recently focused not only on resilience in obvious adversity but also on how students and teachers overcome everyday challenges to learn and succeed.

Lately it has become clear that the resilience of teachers, institutions, and entire communities is just as important as student resilience. According to Elena Aguilar, a prominent teacher trainer, resilient teachers are ones who reflect, set limits to maintain their energy, and set clear priorities. Research is ongoing on the importance of cultivating teacher resilience in both pre-service and practicing teachers. Additionally some studies have been conducted on teaching in war zones; for example, community resilience and education access in Afghanistan, the resilience of teachers in Syria, and the resilience of Ukranian education. Other studies have focused on refugees, such as Syrian refugees in Lebanon. With Lebanon facing one war after another, however, there should be more studies on the resilience of students and teachers based in the country, not just refugees. At the institutional level, the private schools seem to be faring better than their public counterparts in the current situation. For example, the Catholic schools of Lebanon have recently made their resilience public as announced by the Catholic News Agency, stressing – from their point of view -the need to spread faith and hope as a religious duty (“Catholic Schools Stand Resilient Amid War”). A resilience program was already in place in Lebanese public schools, involving refugees and vulnerable Lebanese: The Education Cannot Wait Multi-Year Resilience Program, initiated jointly by Lebanese Authorities and external NGOs. Now that more of the population is vulnerable, new resilience measures may need to be set on a broader scale.