Resilience is an old, yet emerging construct in education, “although the term is new, resilience is not a new concept” (Manciaux, 2003). Its research and evolution have not been deeply explored, and because of this it is even more important to study its applicability for processes that transform difficulties into education improvement opportunities.

            It is important to note that resilience comes from physics, “go back, jump back, stand out, bounce back” (Kotliarenco, Cáceres and Fontecilla, 1997). It is the capacity that materials have to resist pressure, flexibly fold, recover their original shape, not get bent out of shape under pressure or external forces, and resist blows.

            The most influential studies took place in the seventies and eighties and dealt with social psychology. They were performed analytically (Garmezy, 1974; Garmezy, Masten and Tellegen, 1984) (Werner and Smith, 1982, 1992, 2001).

The concept of resilience can be understood in this field as:

         “Moral support, the characteristic of a person who does not become discouraged and who does not let himself get knocked around.” (Bowlby, 1985)

         “A dynamic process which approaches positive adaptation within the context of considerable adversity.” (Luthar, Cicchetti and Becker, 2000)

         “Patterns of positive adaptation in the context of considerable risk or adversity.” (Mastern and Powell, 2003)

            For their time, the studies on resilience were multidisciplinary. They ranged from social psychology to social, physical, sport and educational perspectives.

            One important piece of information is that these studies (Bonnano, 2010; Barudy and Marquebreucq, 2006; Wagnild and Collins, 2009) coincide in the mastery of competencies for developing resilience. For this, it is important to study the capacity for resilience from the following perspectives:

1.         Optimism: Necessary for confronting adverse or risky situations.

2.         The capacity to trust others and one’s self. Delegating functions and responsibilities is a type of proof of this.

3.         Letting one’s self be helped in moments of weakness. We all have weaknesses and sharing them helps us overcome them.

4.         Confronting adversity from different points of view. Variety leads to new ways of interpreting reality.

5.         Using humor to alleviate difficult moments.

            We intend to study these dimensions in resilient leadership of academic directors. We consider them important due to the fact that society is advancing more quickly every day and there are constant political changes and new cultural demands.

            Occasionally, academic directors do not know how to respond to this reality, thus creating stressful situations whose repercussions are felt in the academic organization.

            This research intends to check Spanish academic directors’ competency for resilient leadership. For such, we will perform an exhaustive analysis of reality and the implementation of a program based on the principal aspect of resilience. Although in this document, only the results of theoretical bases are presented. 

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