Promoting Resilience in the Classroom: A Guide to Developing Pupils' Emotional and Cognitive Skills

Carmel Cefai

Mar 2008 · Jessica Kingsley Publishers

About this eBook

Resilience is a set of qualities that enable children to adapt and transform, to overcome risk and adversity, and to develop social competence, problem-solving skills, autonomy and a sense of purpose. For children and young people it is as vital to possess these qualities in school environments as in the family and the community at large.

This handbook for teachers and educators explores ways of nurturing resilience in vulnerable students. It proposes a new, positive way of thinking about schools as institutions that can foster cognitive and socio-emotional competence in all students.

Individual chapters examine effective practices in schools and classrooms, and assess a range of classroom processes, such as engagement, inclusion, collaboration and prosocial behaviour. The author makes use of case studies throughout to bring to life classroom activities and concrete strategies that will promote best practice for enhancing student resilience, and offers a framework that can be adapted to the existing nature, culture and needs of each individual school community and its members.

Promoting Resilience in the Classroom is a valuable resource for educational practitioners as well as educational officers and policy makers engaged in school development and educational improvement.

About the author

Carmel Cefai, PhD, chartered educational psychologist, is a lecturer in educational and health psychology in the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Education, University of Malta. He is course director of the M.Ed. in Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties at the University of Malta, and is co-director of a national research project on social, emotional and behavioural difficulties in school.

Professor Paul Cooper is a chartered psychologist and professor of education and is Director if the School of Education and the Centre for Innovation in Raising Educational Achievement at the University of Leicester. UK. He is series editor of the `Innovative Learning for All' series and co-author with Yonca Tiknaz of Nurture Groups in School and At Home: Connecting with Children with Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties, which is also in the series.