The Resilience Project: an exploratory trial of a resilience promotion intervention in Victorian primary schools

TIDIER checklist Brief name: The Resilience Project Evaluation Why: Child and youth mental health problems are highly prevalent globally. Resilience refers to an individual’s capacity to continue to function and adapt to major life disruptions and significant adversity. The Resilience Project’s school-based program aims to improve resilience of children and create a supportive school community through a coordinated program of presentations, teacher focused curriculum materials, and personal student journals. What Materials: Face-to-face presentations (1 to 1.5 hours each) by one of two staff members of the Resilience Project, both of whom hold teaching qualifications. Presentations are motivational and focus on use of daily strategies such as mindfulness, kindness, and gratitude to promote emotional wellbeing and personal resilience. Presentations are delivered in a school setting, commencing with presentations to teaching staff, following by student presentations and concluding with a presentation to parents/guardians. In addition to the initial presentation, school teaching staff receive a Professional Development session (approx. 1 hour) run by The Resilience Project schools coordinator to describe implementation of the Resilience Project curriculum in classrooms, through use of the teacher resource and student journal. Curriculum materials: Teacher resource including 30 lesson plans (to be delivered at each teacher’s discretion but recommended 1 per week) delivered by the primary school classroom teacher. Lesson plans focus on teaching students strategies for using gratitude, kindness and mindfulness to improve resilience. A corresponding student journal is provided to all students participating in the program to be used with Resilience curriculum lessons delivered by teachers. All materials used in the intervention, including the ‘teacher resource’ and the ‘student journal’ are developed and owned by the Resilience Project and used in their regular school-based program and have not been altered for the trial. Tailoring: Lesson plans were developed to fit with Australian national curriculum and are tailored to students’ year level to suit children’s development. Materials and presentations are identical for all schools, however classroom teachers have discretion in how lesson plans are delivered throughout the school year in order to fit around regular classroom teaching. Strategies to maintain or improve fidelity The evaluation is designed to assess the different components of the intervention including fidelity. Three waves of quantitative data collection will be conducted: Wave 1 - before the initial presentations; Wave 2 approximately 1 month after the presentations to capture their initial impact; and Wave 3 will assess the combined impact of the curriculum and presentations over time. Wave 3 will take place approximately 6 months after the teacher professional development sessions which is assumed to be the starting point of curriculum delivery. Fidelity of program implementation will be evaluated through survey data at two time points (Wave 2 and Wave 3 of data collection), including questions to: • students, parents/guardians, teachers about whether they attended the initial presentations • teachers on how program lesson plans have been delivered throughout the intervention period including the number of lessons delivered and approximate frequency. • students on their use of the Resilience journal provided as part of the program. The semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions that will be held between Wave 2 and 3 with participants will include open ended questions regarding use of specific elements of the resilience program.