Australian Educational Researcher

This study found that, despite an obvious lack of professional development in the are a of resilience, teachers’ theoretical knowledge of resilience was sound. It also found that teachers had a perceived level of confidence in their ability to identify associated p rotective factors and to assist children in building resilience.

However, teachers’ ability to identify students who had or who lacked these protective factors was problematic. This finding suggests a gap between teachers’ theoretical knowledge of resilience and the practical application of this knowledge in the classroom.

One of the fundamental findings in this study is that the majority of teachers have not been involved in any professional development about resilience. Two of the three teachers involved in professional development wrote that they had not attended programmes that directly covered these areas of resilience.

Instead, components of resilience were embedded in programs related to bullying, behaviour management, stress or Child Protection Policy.

This nesting of resilience issues in professional development programmes is of concern because teachers may not readily identify resilience or may attribute some components as being part of other broader issues such as bullying.

Read more: http://www.aare.edu.au/aer/online/0701c.pdf