Journal of Education and Human Development

Resilience Programmes and their Place in Education, a Critical Review with Reference to Interventions in Wolverhampton
Karl Royle

Abstract
This paper reviews an evaluation of two small scale “resilience” programmes carried out as part of the Wolverhampton City Council Big Lottery funded Headstart programme trial phase 2 in 2015 in preparation for a larger scale implementation in phase 3 (2017). Whilst the initial evaluation of the programmes used conventional education based impact frameworks this paper interrogates and frames the activities carried out through the lens of the capability approach in order to appraise the extent to which the programmes are potentially able to contribute to developing “valued functionings” within participants’ lives. It goes further by examining the findings from the programme evaluation against accepted definitions of resilience to show how far they might have contributed to some of the claimed attributes required for developing resilient lives amongst participants. The paper also draws on the concept of identity capital and considers the interventions from the conceptual standpoint of therapeutic governance. Wolverhampton is a City in the West Midlands region of the UK with high levels of deprivation coupled to a post industrialization backdrop with higher than average levels of unemployment. The paper questions the positioning of school based resilience and wellbeing programmes as a sole solution to mental health per se against a backdrop of increasing deprivation.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/jehd.v6n1a5