Abstract

This study aims at examining inservice and student teachers’ assessments of the efforts made by the Greek elementary schools to promote resilience and to develop a sense of connection and wellbeing to the school environment. There are four main categories (Henderson & Milstein, 1996) of resilience building key experiences, each nurturing respectively a sense of belonging, competence, empowerment, and usefulness for both children and school personnel. Approximately 250 inservice primary school teachers and 250 student teachers from Greece participated in this research, responding to the 35 items of the Greek adjustment of the School Resiliency Building Assessment Inventory (SRBAI) (Henderson & Milstein, 1996:114-116), based on a four-point Likert type scale ranging from 1 to 4 (1=done, 2=enough done, 3=much to be done, 4=nothing done). The reliability of the total score is very good (a=.934), while the reliability of the SRBAI subscales is adequately high, ranging from a=.730 to a=.855. The total resilience building assessment score is not sufficiently positive (M=2.41, SD=.50), though inservice teacher assessments are significantly (p<0.001) more positive/school defending (M=2.19, SD=.53) than student teacher assessments (M=2.55, SD=.43), that are more negative/school demanding. There are also findings suggesting statistically significant mean differences (p<0.001) for most SRBAI scores in relation to teachers’ sociodemographic characteristics, such as employment status, age, gender, meaning awareness of ‘resilience’, and years of employment. Additionally, there are statistically significant (p<0.001) intercorrelations among all SRBAI subscale scores. These findings are extremely important to the struggle of maintaining a resilience building school atmosphere in which all teachers and children feel fairly treated, connected to others, and respected member of the school. Implications for practice and further research are under consideration.