Resilience and Coping: Implications for Gifted Children and Youth at Risk

This article summarizes findings from resilience literature relevant to the development of children and youth and derives specific strategies for enhancing outcomes for gifted children and youth most at risk for encountering adversity. Following a description of types of factors critical to understanding resilience literature, the authors focus on studies relating intelligence, development, and diversity to resilience-topics that can inform practice with gifted children and youth, particularly those at risk. Central to understanding the literature is the concept that four types of factors function in predictable ways to influence resilience: compensatory, risk, protective, and vulnerability factors. The large body of literature on resilience and coping gives promise to finding specific ways in which teachers and counselors can enhance success among at-risk children and youth, including those who are gifted and talented. While high intelligence is not a requirement for resilient outcomes, cognitive ability appears to be a supporting factor, especially as it relates to problem solving and coping.

Categorised in: Academic Literature