Evaluating resilience-based programs for schools using a systematic consultative review

Resilient approaches to working in school contexts take many different forms.This makes them difficult to evaluate, copy and compare. Conventional academic literaturereviews of these approaches are often unable to deal with the complexity of theinterventions in a way that leads to a meaningful comparative appraisal. Further, they rarelysummarise and critique the literature in a way that is of practical use to people actuallywishing to learn how to intervene in an educational context, such as parents andpractitioners. This includes teachers and classroom assistants, who can experience reviewsas frustrating, difficult to digest and hard to learn from. Applying findings to their ownparticular settings, without precisely replicating the approach described, presents seriouschallenges to them. The aim of this paper is to explain how and why school-basedresilience approaches for young people aged 12-18 do (or do not) work in particularcontexts, holding in mind the parents and practitioners who engage with young people on adaily basis, and whom we consulted in the empirical element of our work, as our audience.Further, we attempt to present the results in a way that answer parents' and practitioners'most commonly asked questions about how best to work with young people usingresilience-based approaches. The review is part of a broader study looking more generallyat resilience-based interventions for this age group and young adults. We offer a criticaloverview of approaches and techniques that might best support those young people whoneed them the most.