I am posting my literature review. It hasn’t been an easy couple days for me because we were pounded with snow at my house. I only just got my internet back on at 8 pm tonight. The plow just went by about five minutes ago, so I should be able to get into town tomorrow. Yay!
(Note: I have edited my post to include my citations in my Literature Review 09/27/15)
Literature Review:
Successful students have resilience, but it is not something they have when they are born (pbs.org, n.d.). The key question to building resilience in students is about how much to allow them to struggle. Research tells us that resilience allows people to cope with struggles, problems, and setbacks (Cherry, n.d.). People can become overwhelmed with expectations and daily life. However, they can learn to become more resilient if they learn how to manage stress and meet problems head on, they are able to “bounce back” (Doll, Brehm, & Zucker, 2014). Resilient people are often aware of causes of their emotions and understand that life has setbacks. They know that they have control over their actions and own the positive or negative effects of their chosen actions. They can problem solve and know where to look for help if they need it (American Psychological Association, n.d.). People can learn to be resilient over time. Many factors lead to being resilient. Some of theses factors include being a part of supportive relationships, good self-esteem, belief in your abilities, successful management of impulses, willingness to ask for help, and refusing to be a victim (American Psychological Association, n.d.).
Children look to both parents and teachers to help build their resilience skills (Dwyer, 2013). There are common elements for teachers to think about in regards to student resiliency. Teachers should recognize that they do not have a role in some of the core needs, but students also are not given a choice on adhering to the common elements. For example, resilient students get plenty of sleep, eat healthy, and exercise regularly (Child Trends, 2013). The classroom teacher does not have a say in what time parents put children to bed or what they choose to feed them. However, teachers can help student build resilience by discussing the concept of resilience with students, nurturing student strengths, teach goal setting and planning strategies, reduce student competitiveness, use peer teaching methods, connect with the families of students, focus on good behavior, praise the effort made my students, and let students know that you have high expectations (Meichenbaum, n.d.). It is very important for teachers to allow students to get frustrated and work through those frustrations (Cleaver, 2015). Students need to be allowed to make mistakes and learn from them.
There are many ideas of what to use to measure resiliency. Many measures have been developed and are available for researchers to use, but are focused towards children over the age of ten (Hall, 2010). However, both The Resilience Research Centre and the Devereux Foundation have developed measures that can be used to determine resilience in younger children. The Resilience Research Centre has a free child version of the Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM) specifically for children between the ages of five and nine (Resilience Research Centre, n.d.). The Devereux Student Strengths Assessment (DESSA) costs $120 to purchase the kit (Devereux Center for Resilient Children, n.d.). The CYRM allows students to inventory themselves using smiley, straight, and frowning faces. The inventory focuses on how they perceive their relationships and abilities (Resilience Research Centre, n.d.). The DESSA has parents or teachers assess each child using a behavior scale that only focuses on positive behavior (Devereux Center for Resilient Children, n.d.). Either of these assessments would give a good starting baseline to determine how much resiliency a student currently has and they could be assessed again at a later date to measure growth in resiliency. However, neither inventory allows a teacher measure resiliency while a student is completing a difficult task.
Technology is very engaging to students and can be used to boost resiliency when it introduces new concepts and challenges, like Chibitronics. Chibitronics are small circuit stickers that have a LED light (Hoopes, 2014). Students learn about how circuits work by using adhesive copper tape to light up the LED light. The tape is very thin and flimsy. It can be very frustrating to use, especially for young students. However, the payoff is that the lights can be used on just about anything, from artwork to clothing (Chibitronics, n.d.). Learning and working with new things can often be uncomfortable for students, which is part of the reason that resilience is an important skill for students (Couros, 2015). New technology allows teachers to help students build their resiliency skills.
Bibliography
American Psychological Association. (n.d.). The Road to Resilience. Retrieved September 23, 2015, from American Psychological Association: http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/road-resilience.aspx
Cherry, K. (n.d.). What Is Resilience? Retrieved September 23, 2015, from About Education: http://psychology.about.com/od/crisiscounseling/a/resilience.htm
Chibitronics. (n.d.). Craft. Retrieved September 26, 2015, from Chibitronics: http://chibitronics.com/craft-guide/
Child Trends. (2013, October 30). What Can Schools Do to Build Resilience In Their Students. Retrieved September 24, 2015, from Child Trends: http://www.childtrends.org/what-can-schools-do-to-build-resilience-in-their-students/
Cleaver, S. (2015, April 30). 8 Ways to Help Your Students Build Resiliency. Retrieved September 26, 2015, from We Are Teachers: http://www.weareteachers.com/blogs/post/2015/04/30/8-ways-to-help-your-students-build-resiliency
Couros, G. (2015, July 15). Resilience and Innovation in Education. Retrieved September 24, 2015, from The Principal of Change: http://georgecouros.ca/blog/archives/5412
Devereux Center for Resilient Children. (n.d.). The Devereux Student Strengths Assessment (DESSA) Kit. Retrieved September 26, 2015, from Devereux Center for Resilient Children: http://www.centerforresilientchildren.org/school-age/assessments-resources/the-devereux-student-strengths-assessment-dessa-kit/
Doll, B., Brehm, K., & Zucker, S. (2014). Resilient Classrooms, Second Edition: Creating Healthy Environments for Learning. New York: The Guilford Press.
Dwyer, K. (2013, October 1). Building resilience in classrooms and schools. Retrieved September 24, 2015, from Children’s Mental Health Network: http://www.cmhnetwork.org/media-center/morning-zen/building-resilient-in-classrooms-and-schools
Hall, D. K. (2010, November 17). Compendium of Selected Resilience and Related Measures for Children and Youth. Retrieved September 26, 2015, from Reaching In Reaching Out: http://www.reachinginreachingout.com/documents/appendixe-annotatedcompendiumofresiliencemeasures-nov17-10copyright.pdf
Hoopes, H. (2014, January 22). Chibitronics connects circuits with stickers for entertaining electronic education. Retrieved September 26, 2015, from Gizmag: http://www.gizmag.com/chibitronics-circuit-stickers/30558/
Meichenbaum, Donald (n.d.). How Educators Can Nurture Resilience In High-Risk Children and Their Families. Retrieved September 24, 2015, from TeachSafeSchools.org: http://www.teachsafeschools.org/Resilience.pdf
pbs.org. (n.d.). What is Resilience. Retrieved September 23, 2015, from This Emotional Life: http://www.pbs.org/thisemotionallife/topic/resilience/what-resilience
Resilience Research Centre. (n.d.). Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM). Retrieved September 26, 2015, from Resilience Research Centre: http://www.resilienceproject.org/research/resources/tools/33-the-child-and-youth-resilience-measure-cyrm
Cherie Lindquist 
I really enjoyed your first paragraph and how you establish a theoretical framework of resilience. However, I was looking for your citations throughout the literature review. Where did you get this information? What are the core needs you talk about in paragraph two? Wow, I did not know there is an actual resiliency test.
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Cherie – be sure you add your in-text citation. As your lit review now reads, all of your statements are unsupported! So do cite in the text as well as listing the bibliography.
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I was going to do that, but then I read a guide that said that I shouldn’t do that. It said that I should write down key ideas on notecards and then condense alike ideas together and paraphrase. It said a lit review isn’t supposed to be full of citations, or maybe I misunderstood. I don’t know. I will go back and put in citations. I was confused as to how to write up my lit review with so many sources and I found the “wrong” guidance.
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It may have said “quotations” instead of “citations” 🙂
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That is possible. I didn’t bother to go back and check. You are probably correct. It’s fixed now. 🙂 I was resilient and didn’t even get upset about having to fix it. I can learn to be resilient too.
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Thank you for your feedback. I got really turned around about the citations in text and whether they should be included or not. I was surprised to find an actual resiliency test and I was super excited to find one that was free.
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Now – that being said – good work on finding the literature on resiliency! If you don’t have something that ties resiliency to completing percieved difficult tasks (like circuit building) to increased resiliency it would be good to look for that. I think that while I don’t measure that per se – that is one thing I see with these classes. Through mastering the difficult technology (which really isn’t difficult but is only percieved that way) with success, resiliency is increased and the willingness to try another difficult task is developed. So I am not sure it’s importance to measure the resilience during the activity. What I see is that students thrash about a little and resist to different levels at the beginning, but then they “settle into” the requirements, and by the end of the class, whether they will or won’t do this again, they feel very comfortable and accomplished having done it. It’s kind of like reading a Henry James novel. No one likes doing it. But it feels good having it done.
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Oh don’t talk about snow yet, it’s September 😉 Sorry it’s been a rough couple days for you, hopefully outside will lighten up and allow you to live life again easier.
I’m glad you figured out how to incorporate Chibitronics into your research project after spending a lot of money on the items for your students. It’s nice that you will be able to get dual purpose out of it, makes the money that much more worth being spent. Your proposal read through very nicely to me, it was easy to follow, and the ideas were good not jumping back and forth from topic to topic. I would like to look more into the child resiliency test to see what it’s all about. I think it would be interesting to use it in class sometime with my 2nd and 3rd graders especially.
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I found a really cool book called Resilient Classrooms, Second Edition: Creating Healthy Environments for Learning by Beth Doll, Katherine Brehm and Steven Zucker. I purchased it as an ebook and so far I am finding it to be interesting. Each chapter includes a case study. There is an entire chapter on assessment strategies, but I found that to be a little biased because it went through many different kinds of assessment and explained each method and where it lacked, until it got to one designed by one of the authors. Then there was a lot of in depth explanations. I have skimmed through all the chapters and I still think this book will be a good resource for me, especially since resilience is something that I want to teach my students this year and in the future.
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I can’t believe you guys have snow already!!!! It’s been raining nonstop here all day, and its supposed to continue through Tuesday 😦 I’m also glad that you were able to continue your idea on Chibitronics. It’s so frustrating when you can’t find any research to back you up! “The classroom teacher does not have a say in what time parents put children to bed or what they choose to feed them.” This is such a huge issue in classrooms today. So many students lack a stable, loving home environment, so it makes it so much harder for us to help them at school when their basic needs aren’t met. I’m looking forward to following your research. Good luck!
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