Resilience, School Connectedness and Academic Achievement
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Resilience, School Connectedness & Academic Achievement
Bonnie Benard
WestEd-Oakland
bbenard@wested.org
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Resilience Research
Longitudinal developmental studies of how young people have transformed risk and adversity into healthy development and school and life success.
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Over 40 Years of Resilience Research Tells Us That:
…When the focus is on supporting youth, at least 70% of young people in the most challenging of life’s conditions not only survive but grow into thriving adults.
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The Kauai Study
Emmy Werner & Ruth Smith
Vulnerable But Invincible (1982)
Overcoming the Odds (1992)
Journeys from Childhood to Mid-Life (2001)
Pie Chart 1: 1955 BIRTH COHORT
RISKS
Poverty
Parental Discord
Parental Psychopathology
Perinatal Stress
Pie Chart 2: AGE 18
HIGH RISK BEHAVIORS
Delinquencies
Mental Health Problems
Pregnancies
Pie Chart 3: AGE 32 & 41
SUCCESS IN
Relationships/Marriage
Work
Parenthood
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Findings of Resilience Research
- Risk ≠ Outcome
- Behavior ≠ Capacity
- Personal Strengths = Success
- Environmental Supports & Opportunities = Life Success
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Youth Development Process: Resilience in Action
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Youth/Human Development Process: Resilience in Action
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The Power of Schools
"A school can create a coherent environment, a climate, more potent than any single influence—teachers, class, family, neighborhood, so potent that for at least six hours a day it can override almost everything else in the live of children."
Ron Edmonds
1986
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The BIG Research Question for Closing the Achievement Gap
"What are the key factors that promote academic success among students whose demographic characteristics and school circumstances place them at high risk of failure?"
Theresa Akey
MRDC
January 2006
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Youth/Human Development Process: Resilience in Action
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Protective Factors = Critical
Developmental Supports & Opportunities
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Developmental Supports & Opportunities
Listening to Students: What student say about protective factors in their schools
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Developmental Supports & Opportunities
Evaluation Research
- Adventure Learning
- Arts-based Learning
- Service Learning
- Small Group/Cooperative Learning
- Project-based Learning
- Mentoring/Peer Helping
- School-to-Work
Promote Healthy Development & Successful Learning
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Developmental Supports & Opportunities
Engaging Schools: Fostering High School Students’ Motivation to Learn
- Personalization of school experience
- High & clear standards
- Meaningful and engaging pedagogy & curriculum
- Professional learning communities for adults
National Research Council Institute of Medicine
National Academy of Science, 2004
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Developmental Supports & Opportunities
Consortium on Chicago School Research
Relational trust consists of…
- Caring
- Respect
- Competence
- Integrity
Among
- Students
- Teachers
- Administrators
- Parents
Promotes academic achievement
Schools with high trust levels are 3 times more likely to report gains in reading & math scores.
Schools in top quartile on standardized tests had higher levels of trust.
"This is about NOT forgetting the people."
Anthony Bryk & Barbara Schneider 2002
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Developmental Supports & Opportunities
Project on High Performing Learning Communities
- Small learning communities
- Core academic program
- High expectations for all students
- Professional development
- Fostering health and safety for all student and school community members
- Engaging families in the education of their students
- Creating strong school-community and school-work linkages
"Reorganizing high schools into small developmentally supportive communities and providing a teacher-advisory for each student reduced dropout rates 40 to 50 percent or more."
Robert Felner, 2002
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Developmental Supports & Opportunities
Literature on High Performing Learning Communities
- A set of high expectations and a rigorous curriculum to support it.
- A variety of instructional strategies that engage students and connect them to real-world applications.
- Strong connections between students and staff.
- Leadership and a school culture that is mission-driven and focused on helping all student learn.
- A professional community of faculty and other staff that focuses on teaching and learning and building capacity to close the achievement gap.
- Additional supports for students who need them.
Catherine Walcott, et al
High School Reform: National & State Trends, WestEd 2005
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Developmental Supports & Opportunities
Meeting Five Critical Challenges of High School Reform: Lessons from Research on Three Reform Models*
"The overall message of this synthesis is that structural changes to improve personalization and instructional improvement are the twin pillars of high school reform."
Janet Quint, MRDC
May 2006
*Career Academies
First Things First
Talent Development
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Developmental Supports & Opportunities
School Context, Student Attitudes and Behavior, and Academic Achievement
"The findings make clear supportive teachers and clear and high expectations about behavior are key to the development of both student engagement and perceived competence….The study also makes the case that student engagement is enhanced by learning activities that involve student to student interaction."
Teresa Akey
MRDC, Jan. 2006
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Developmental Supports & Opportunities
Moving from Risk to Resilience in all aspects of schooling
- Relationships Between and Among Teachers, Students, Parents
- Teacher Behavior and Attitudes
- Physical Environment
- Curriculum and Instruction
- Grouping
- Evaluation
- Learning Motivation
- Discipline
Rhona Weinstein, adapted by Bonnie Benard
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Developmental Supports & Opportunities
Getting Results: Developing Safe and Healthy Kids
Update 5, 2005
Student Health, Supportive Schools, and Academic Success
"I believe that we can address the social, emotional, and health issues facing youths at the same time that we maintain our focus on academic success."
Superintendent Jack O' Connell
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A Simple Wisdom…
"At a time when the traditional structures of caring have deteriorated, schools must become places where teachers and students live together, talk with each other, take delight in each other’s company. My guess is that when schools focus on what really matters in life, the cognitive ends we now pursue so painfully and artificially will be achieved somewhat more naturally…
It is obvious that children will work harder and do things -- even odd things like adding fractions -- for people they love and trust."
Nel Noddings, 1998
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Youth Development Process: Resilience in Action
Youth Inputs
THAT MEET DEVELOPMENTAL NEEDS
- Safety
- Love & Belonging
- Respect
- Power
- Challenge
- Mastery
- Meaning
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Developmental Needs
At the core of youth development is the belief that human behavior is motivated by developmental needs.
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Developmental Needs
Big Question for Youth Development Practice:
"How are we meeting our students' needs?"
- Safety
- Love
- Belonging
- Respect
- Mastery
- Challenge
- Power
- Meaning
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Developmental Needs
- At the core of youth development is the belief that human behavior is motivated by developmental needs.
- Developmental psychologists refer to these as "powerful protective adaptational systems" (Ann Masten).
- Resilience is a developmental wisdom that takes the form of developmental needs.
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Developmental Needs
Brain Science finds…
"Downshifted" Thinking
When children feel threatened by their environments they often "downshift" their thinking to fight or flight stress responses & cannot access higher order thinking & learning.
"Self-Efficacious" Thinking
When children experience environments that engage their sense of "self-efficacy" (i.e. innate resilience) they activate their higher-order thinking & learning & creativity.
Renate & Geoffrey Caine
Education on the Edge of Possibility (1997)
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Youth Development Process
Resilience in Action - Youth Outputs
PROMOTING POSITIVE DEVELOPMENTAL OUTCOMES
- Social
- Emotional
- Cognitive
- Moral-Spiritual
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Developmental Outcomes
Healthy Development of the Whole Child
- Social
- Emotional
- Physical
- Cognitive
- Moral/spiritual
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Developmental Outcomes
Healthy Development of the Whole Child
If stakeholders believe schools are responsible for developing the whole child, what needs to change? If decisions about programs started with "What works for the child?" how would resources - time, space, and human - be arrayed to ensure each child’s success? What would happen if community resources were arrayed in support of children reaching their potential as young adults? If students were truly at the center of the system, what could be achieved?
Gene Carter
ASCD Commission on the Whole Child, 2006
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Developmental Outcomes
Personal Resilience Strengths:
What Resilience Looks Like
SOCIAL
Social Competence
- Responsiveness
- Flexibility
- Cross-cultural competence
- Empathy/caring
- Communication skills
- Sense of humor
EMOTIONAL
Autonomy
- Positive Identity
- Self-efficacy
- Initiative
- Mastery
- Self-awareness
- Resistance
MORAL/SPIRITUAL
Sense of Purpose & Future
- A special interest/hobby
- Goal directedness
- Imagination
- Achievement motivation
- Educational aspiration
- Persistence
- Optimism
- Faith
- Sense of Meaning
COGNITIVE
Problem-solving
- Planning
- Seeing alternatives
- Critical thinking
- Resourcefulness
Bonnie Benard - Resiliency: What We Have Learned, 2004
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Youth Development Process: Resilience in Action
Societal Impacts
THUS PRODUCING, POSITIVE PREVENTION AND EDUCATION OUTCOMES
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Prevention & Education Outcomes
- Protecting Adolescents from Harm: Findings from the National Longitudinal Study on Adolescent Health
- Parent/family connectedness and perceived school connectedness were protective against every health risk behavior measure.
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Prevention & Education Outcomes
School Connectedness Constructs
- Academic engagement
- Belonging
- Discipline/fairness
- Extracurricular activities
- Likes school
- Student voice
- Peer relations
- Safety
- Teacher Support
"Whether examining academic performance or involvement with a range of health behaviors, young people who feel connected to school, that they belong, and that teacher are supportive and treat them fairly, do better."
Heather Libby,
Journal of School Health, Sept. 2004
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Implications for Ed. Policy and Practice
It’s HOW we do what we do…
Protective factors must be at the heart of a comprehensive school reform program if it is to truly promote healthy development and school & life success.
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Implications for Ed. Policy and Practice
It starts with Educators' Beliefs
- Adults' BELIEF in Youth Resilience
- Youth Needs
- Youth’s Academic and
- Life Success
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Implications for Ed. Policy and Practice
Leadership Belief Key to Systems Change
"…Hope,optimism, and self-belief among teachers are the vital wellsprings of successful learning and positive educational change… It is individuals who must hope, but it is institutions that create the climate and conditions which make people feel more hopeful or less so."
Michael Fullan, 1998
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Implications for Ed. Policy & Practice
Resilience in action……begins with a
- Professional
- Learning
- Community
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Conclusion
"We can, whenever and wherever we choose, successfully teach all children whose schooling is of interest to us. We already know more than we need to do that….Whether or not we will ever effectively teach the children of the poor is probably far more a matter of politics than of social science."
Ron Edmonds
1986
