The appraisal and enhancement of resilience modalities in middle adolescents within the school context

Abstract

Middle adolescents are exposed to environments riddled with potential adversities which pervade their lives, adding to the challenges inherent in their developmental stage. They spend a significant time in school and therefore it is an appropriate context to foster, enhance, and develop emotional, social, and cognitive resilience competencies. There are limited psychological assessment instruments for the South African population that can be used to appraise the level of resilience modalities in middle adolescents. Our aim was to describe and explore the process of appraising, developing, and enhancing the modalities of resilience through the newly developed Resilience Enhancement Kit and the Resiliency Scale. The research was conducted from a combined qualitative and quantitative approach. The results indicated that there was an increase in the level of resilient functioning after administration of the Resilience Enhancement Kit and it therefore appeared to be successful in enhancing resilience modalities. The Resilience Enhancement Kit and Resiliency Scale could be administered by educational psychologists and teachers to assess and enhance resilience modalities and could be incorporated into the school curriculum.

Keywords

• appraisal
• cognitive competence
• emotional competence
• middle adolescents
• resilience
• school context
• social competence