Promoting Competence and Resilience in the School Context

Four decades of research on resilience in young people provide compelling data and models for applications in the school context. Resilience theory and findings are highly congruent with Strengths-Based School Counseling (SBSC) as formulated by Galassi and Akos (2007). In this article, resilience is defined in relation to competence in developmental tasks and risks to positive development, with reference to key promotive and protective roles of schools and school personnel. Implications of a resilience framework for schools are delineated, including positive approaches to mission statements, models of change, measuring positive progress, and mobilizing powerful systems for changing the direction of human development. New horizons of research on resilience are described, along with the potential of integrating SBSC and resilience-based frameworks in transformative efforts to promote the successful development of young people.