By resilience we are referring to an individual's ability to bounce back despite the adversities to which they are exposed, by analogy to what we mean by the resilience of physical materials recovering from shock or breakage. If in psychology the concept of psychological resilience is used with the meaning of
“positive adaptation, or the ability to maintain or regain mental health, despite experiencing adversity” (Herrman, et al., 2011, p. 259), in educational sciences, we define academic or educational resilience as “the heightened likelihood of success in school and other life accomplishments despite environmental adversities brought about by early traits, con[1]ditions, and experiences” (Wang, Haertal, & Walberg, 1994, p. 46).
Internationally, the importance of resilience in the training and development of learners and in lifelong learning is increasingly highlighted. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has introduced resilience education as a key policy direction for education in 2021 (OECD, 2021) and the World Economic Forum has included resilience in its list of 10 key competences for 2025 (World Economic Forum, 2020).
Martin & Marsh (2006) developed the a 5-C theoretical model of academic resilience, which describe the main protective factors (personal resources) that students may use in order to overcome the difficulties that occur in the learning procces. These predictors of educational resilience are: confidence (self-efficacy), coordination (planning), control, composure (low anxiety), and commitment (persistence). Based on this model, we aim to develop a short and simple scale assessing resilience at the classroom level. This tool can be useful for teachers to evaluate and reflect on the level of resilience of the educational climate.
Usually, educational climate is characterised as positive or negative (Hamlin, 2021), even though it involves multiple dimentions referring to "the relational, social, psychological, affective, intellectual, cultural, and moral environment that characterizes educational activity" (Bocos, Răduț-Taciu, & Stan, 2016, p. 207). Doll et al. (2010) developed the ClassMaps Survey, that is a tool for describing the learning environment from the perspective of students. The items of the scale target the 5 factors that describe a positive educational climate: teacher-student relationship, peer relationship, academic efficacy, self determination, behavioral self-control (Doll, 2013). The second objective of our research is to verify if the students' perceptions of the educational climate correspond to teachers' perceptions of it.
Lastly, when we are reffering to resilient classroom, an important role is played by the teacher-student and peer relationships that are established. Therefore, we decided to investigate whether is the quality of the teacher-student relationship or the quantity (time spent together) that matter the most in building up resilient classrooms?