Pathways to Resilience III: Beyond Nature vs. Nurture

Programs in Schools:

Abstract #71
“The Best Of Your Life: What Can Schooldays Do?”
Presenter: Derek Blincow 
Abstract:
For those children who grow up within contexts of constellated disadvantage, one of the most important mechanisms for ensuring better than expected outcomes is through education.  Relocating children from a deprived context to one of privileged education has been used to harness that effect.  
This paper will explore the work of two projects, one in the UK, the other in Detroit, USA where there have been such projects in operation for over 40 years.    In the UK, the Royal National Childrens Foundation (RNCF) funds children to attend private residential schools where the child is subject to a high index of parental difficulty.  Increasingly, some of these children are in state care.  In Detroit, the Horizons project has worked since the late 1960s to fund children from the inner city into one particular private residential school.
The paper will sketch the research as well as the cultural and political background informing these projects, comparing and contrasting outcomes, highlighting successes and continuing dilemmas.  It will explore the prospects for their extension into working even further with the most disadvantaged children.  For these children and their families, what is the benefit, what the cost?

Abstract #80
Discovering Your Possibilities
Presenter: Kathy Furlong Co - Presenter: Farook Sarani
Abstract:
A school-based program involving university mentors designed to increase academic success and resiliency in at-risk high school students was evaluated using an explanatory mixed methods design.  Quantitative data was collected and analyzed and qualitative data was gathered in order to explain and expand the quantitative results. 
The study investigated two research questions. Does the Discovering Your Possibilities (DYP) program increase students’ academic success, as identified by student engagement:  increase in attendance, decrease in lates, improved credit accumulation and increase in grade point average and does it increase the level of resiliency of at-risk youth?  What elements in the program contributed to resiliency (if any) from the perceptions of the students, and from the perceptions of the Student Success Teachers?  The results of this study indicate that the intervention had a positive effect on academic success for those students who participated more fully in the intervention.  While the quantitative data results indicate that there is no relationship between resiliency and the intervention, the qualitative data indicates that the intervention positively affected resiliency.
The DYP program has been implemented in another school board in another city.  This program involves community mentors and data results demonstrate that the program is meeting its objectives.

Abstract #166
The Role of School Connectedness in Understanding Mental Health Outcomes in the Context of Cumulative Risk
Presenter: Tanya Lereya 
Abstract:
Research indicates that children who are exposed to multiple adverse contextual factors are at heightened risk of internalizing and externalizing problems.  However, there is also significant variability in mental health outcomes for those exposed to multiple risks and a range of protective factors accounting for some of this variability have been identified (e.g., parenting, social support and positive peer relationships).  However, there is much yet to explore about how school-based relationships support resilience.  For example, it is unclear whether the role of schools connectedness is the same in primary and secondary schools contexts and it is yet to be established whether it is the child’s personal perception of school connectedness that is important or whether it is the extent to which the school is collectively viewed as having a connected climate.The current study draws on longitudinal data collected from 2 cohorts (5,485 primary school students and 5,981 secondary school students) to carry out multi-level structural equation models that explore the moderating role of school-level and individual-level school connectedness in understanding the impact of cumulative risk on the development of internalizing symptoms and externalizing problems over a two year period.  Implications for the role of the school in buffering children against the impact of adverse events on child mental health will be discussed.