Resilience
Alessandro Vaccarelli
University of l’Aquila

The Latin word resilire, which gives rise to the term “resilience”, evokes the meanings of ‘bounce’ and ‘jump back’ to convey flexibility and elasticity as its main meanings. From a psychological and pedagogical perspective, resilience is thus defined as the ability to cope with adverse situations, make it through life’s difficulties, and search for new balances in which individuals may feel that they have acquired strength, courage and future perspectives. People are thus resilient in different situations and contexts, from situations of crisis or stress to traumatic events.
Talking about resilience also entails distinguishing a few factors that explain the resilient behavior of individuals. These include the feeling of standing on secure footing that develops when people enjoy meaningful supportive bonds, self-esteem, adequate appraisal and coping strategies, a sense of humor and a pronounced sense of ethics and solidarity (see Vaccarelli, 2016). Taking the models proposed by the scientific literature as a whole, they indicate a depth to the concept of resilience that involves analyzing various risk factors and protective factors, both social and psychological (see Richardson, 2002; Garista, 2018).
The term “resilient” can also be applied to the behavior of institutions and organizations that operate in complex or emergency-based scenarios, that challenge crisis situations, seek to strike new balances and achieve their goals (Mariantoni & Vaccarelli, 2018).
In the surveys of the Programme for International Student Assessment (better known by the acronym PISA), the term “resilience” indicates the ‘school performance’ of disadvantaged groups, that is, the position of those individuals who earn very high scores according to international standards in different areas of competence despite socio-economic disadvantage. The less “resilient” subjects are thus those who do not achieve good grades and therefore tend to drop out of school (see Alivernini et al., 2017). This narrow definition of resilience is effective in helping to frame many situations related to the school trajectories of the most vulnerable groups (migrant students, those in conditions of social and economic disadvantage, NEETs, etc.). However, it must be integrated into the more general definition to avoid the risk of considering resilience as only a “cognitive” datum; indeed, affective and situational factors also contribute to the “consistency” of resilience. The same is true of civic and social enagagement which, if promoted through education, may favor resilient behavior in young people when faced with particular situations of social and psychological stress. Pedagogical and training work must also engage with these latter factors (and the more general definition of resilience), especially when it is aimed at subjects and groups experiencing conditions of disadvantage and vulnerability.

Selected references

Alivernini, F., Manganelli, S., Lucidi, F., Di Leo, I., & Cavicchiolo E. (2017). Studenti svantaggiati e fattori di promozione della resilienza, ECPS Journal, 16, 35-56.

Garista, P. (2018). Come canne di bambù. Farsi mentori della resilienza nel lavoro educativo. FrancoAngeli.

Mariantoni, A., & Vaccarelli, A. (Cur.). (2018). Individui, istituzioni, comunità in emergenza. Intervento psico-socio-pedagogico e lavoro di rete nelle situazioni di catastrofe. FrancoAngeli.

https://ojs.francoangeli.it/_omp/index.php/oa/catalog/book/308

Richardson, G.E. (2002). The metatheory of resilience and resiliency. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 58, 307–321.