Spotting and Strengthening Resiliency Skills from Early Childhood

Background Resilience as a phenomenon has been the subject of research since the 1970s. Initially, the aim was only to observe and describe the phenomenon, but nowadays the focus has shifted to the socio-economic environment and the effects of genetics. However, the study of resilience has not developed a coherent theoretical framework, but can be found in the practice of many disciplines, in a piecemeal way. Given that young people are under extreme stress, both in the school system and in the face of global societal challenges, the project aimed to provide a tool for developing resilience skills for professionals working with young people. For this purpose, we prepared a methodological manual with training themes, a collection of good practices with development tasks, a research, policy recommendations, and presented the methodological manual in the form of a training outline and the collected tasks in the form of pilot training to youth workers, who were asked to try the exercises they had received on their own groups and clients. Objectives Resilience as a phenomenon has been the subject of research since the 1970s. Initially, the aim was only to observe and describe the phenomenon, but nowadays the focus has shifted to the socio-economic environment and the effects of genetics. However, the study of resilience has not developed a coherent theoretical framework, but can be found in the practice of many disciplines, in a piecemeal way. Given that young people are under extreme stress, both in the school system and in the face of global societal challenges, the project aimed to provide a tool for developing resilience skills for professionals working with young people. For this purpose, we prepared a methodological manual with training themes, a collection of good practices with development tasks, a research, policy recommendations, and presented the methodological manual in the form of a training outline and the collected tasks in the form of pilot training to youth workers, who were asked to try the exercises they had received on their own groups and clients. Implementation The project has produced five intellectual products. IO1: a methodological manual on resilience, which describes the phenomenon of resilience, its occurrence in different fields and includes the theme and the terms of reference of a three-day training course for professionals with some experience in leading groups or training. However, the thematic and theoretical part may also be useful for those who only want to integrate a single task into their training or are interested in the topic of resilience. IO2: a collection of best practices, which on the one hand shows how resilience is used in education (in particular how the topic and the tasks fit into the educational and learning methodology processes), and on the other hand, grouping tasks along the resilience factors, which can be used individually or in combination in a given session. IO3: pilot training. During the project, 3-day training sessions were implemented in each participating country, for 20 participants in Slovakia, 20 in Romania and 30 in Hungary. In the end, instead of the planned 70 participants, we managed to involve 76 people who participated in the training in some form, but there were drop-outs (some completed the input questionnaire, thus enriching the research results, but did not start the training, and some completed the training but did not provide feedback on the exercises they tried). The training followed the theme of the methodology manual, with minor changes according to the needs of the group, and then asked participants to try out the tasks of the good practice collection and provide feedback after the training was completed. From the feedback we were able to refine the description of the manual and the tasks, use it to monitor the research, and create an indicative database of how popular each task was and what the most common experiences were based on the feedback. IO4: Research. The research sought to find out how knowledge about resilience is represented in the teacher education systems of the participating countries. This was important for two reasons: we wanted to assess whether the system itself was able to accommodate this approach, and we also wanted to see how resilient the professionals involved (who were mostly teachers or teacher educators) were in their own profession. We also published the research results as a peer-reviewed paper to reach as many professionals as possible, and used them to make policy recommendations. IO5: Policy recommendations, adapted by each country to its own policy environment. The recommendations were sent to teachers' unions and educational organisations. In addition, multiplication events were organised at the end of the project and international project meetings were held throughout the project. Achievements The project has produced five intellectual products. IO1: a methodological manual on resilience, which describes the phenomenon of resilience, its occurrence in different fields and includes the theme and the terms of reference of a three-day training course for professionals with some experience in leading groups or training. However, the thematic and theoretical part may also be useful for those who only want to integrate a single task into their training or are interested in the topic of resilience. IO2: a collection of best practices, which on the one hand shows how resilience is used in education (in particular how the topic and the tasks fit into the educational and learning methodology processes), and on the other hand, grouping tasks along the resilience factors, which can be used individually or in combination in a given session. IO3: pilot training. During the project, 3-day training sessions were implemented in each participating country, for 20 participants in Slovakia, 20 in Romania and 30 in Hungary. In the end, instead of the planned 70 participants, we managed to involve 76 people who participated in the training in some form, but there were drop-outs (some completed the input questionnaire, thus enriching the research results, but did not start the training, and some completed the training but did not provide feedback on the exercises they tried). The training followed the theme of the methodology manual, with minor changes according to the needs of the group, and then asked participants to try out the tasks of the good practice collection and provide feedback after the training was completed. From the feedback we were able to refine the description of the manual and the tasks, use it to monitor the research, and create an indicative database of how popular each task was and what the most common experiences were based on the feedback. IO4: Research. The research sought to find out how knowledge about resilience is represented in the teacher education systems of the participating countries. This was important for two reasons: we wanted to assess whether the system itself was able to accommodate this approach, and we also wanted to see how resilient the professionals involved (who were mostly teachers or teacher educators) were in their own profession. We also published the research results as a peer-reviewed paper to reach as many professionals as possible, and used them to make policy recommendations. IO5: Policy recommendations, adapted by each country to its own policy environment. The recommendations were sent to teachers' unions and educational organisations. In addition, multiplication events were organised at the end of the project and international project meetings were held throughout the project.