Promoting Resilience in Children in Europe – Developing, Implementing, Evaluating and Disseminating a Resilience Curriculum (RESCUR)

Introduction: Europe is facing many challenges today – immigration, poverty and segregation, to mention a few. In order to help children meet these challenges, a resilience curriculum for children aged 5-12 years (RESCUR) has been developed. It is specifically designed for Europe and Eurpean conditions. In this poster, we want to show how cooperation between 6 universities in Europe, supported by the European Commission, has resulted in an interventive resilience program that is built on evidence. The goal is to disseminate the program across Europe.

Methods: The curriculum was first drafted collaboratively amongst the six partners on the basis of the existing literature in the promotion of resilience in early years and primary schools, with a particular focus to European realities. Once it was internally reviewed, it was piloted in 200 early years and primary school classrooms in six European countries, with each of the six partners implementing one theme. Data collection included teacher reflective diaries, classroom checklists, semi-structured interviews with teachers and focus groups with students.

Results: This is the first resilience curriculum for early years and primary schools in Europe. While it seeks to address the needs of vulnerable children such as Roma children, immigrant and refugee children and children with individual educational needs, it does so within an assets-based, developmental, inclusive and culturally responsive approach, thus avoiding potential labelling and stigmatizing, while promoting positive development and growth. It puts the focus on the classroom teacher, in collaboration with parents and other stakeholders, in implementing the curriculum in the classroom. Based on positive pilot testing the resilience curriculum is now finalized and translated for use in schools in Europe. Training of teachers is a precondition for using the detailed manuals prepared for the curriculum.

Effect studies are now being performed in Croatia, Italy, Portugal and Sweden, where researchers collaborate to make sure that some of the instruments used in these countries measure the same things, in order to show how the intervention affects children in the different countries. Malta has done a pre-post test with one of the instruments (the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, SDQ) that the other countries are using, which can be used for comparison between countries.

Conclusions: The results of the on-going implementation and effect studies will be used to inform, and also influence, policy-makers in Europe.