Hello everyone, I'm so glad you can join me for this course on resilience in children. Resilience is all around us. We see it in the situation, terrible situations of war. We see it after major disasters like this disaster at Buffalo Creek. We see it in the millions of children around the world who successfully overcome the disadvantages of poverty or, discrimination. We see it in children who are refugees, who are migrating, or who have lost their homes for some other reason. We also see it in late bloomers, in young people who have a very difficult childhood, and because of that they get off track in their life. Like this young person who became a delinquent, got into all kinds of trouble in adolescence, but then grew up to be a surgeon. All around the world there are millions of children who face situations like this, who have to deal with and overcome the experiences of war, terror, political conflict, natural disasters, and technological disasters of many kinds, maltreatment and exploitation. And all the kinds of displacement that arise from various situations like these. For many decades now there's been a human fascination with resilience in science, but long before that from ancient times to modern times people have been interested in stories about resilience. We know that because there are many old stories and tales of people who overcame adversity. So clearly, people were interested in resilience a long time ago, even though they may not have used that, that concept. The science began about 50 years ago. And the scientists were interested in questions like these. How is it that some children experience great adversity, and yet, turn out well, or recover well from that adversity, while others don't? What protects or helps young people when they face adversity? And what can we learn from research on resilience that would help us to promote resilience in other children? These are the kind of questions we're going to talk about in this course. The course has six sections, six modules, and in those modules we're going to talk about research, case examples of resilience, there'll be readings, video lectures and other videos about resilience. And you'll have the opportunity to share your own observations about resilience in your culture or in the work that you do. In the first unit we're going to talk about the meaning of resilience after this introduction. How, what were the early ideas and ways of defining resilience and what are the more modern ways of defining resilience? We'll talk about landmark events in the history of resilience. And we'll also talk about striking cases of resilience from around the world. We'll talk about a Cambodian survivor of the Killing Fields in Cambodia of the Khmer Rouge. We'll talk about that doctor who started of as a delinquent and became a surgeon. In the second unit of the class, we'll talk about the methods of resilience science. We'll talk about person-focused methods, where we may look at a single case, or people do research on groups of, of people who are identified as showing resilience. We'll look at what are called variable-focused methods. We'll look at risk gradients, promotive and protective factors that people study to try to account for the striking variation in outcomes among people who experience adversity. We'll look at combined methods. We'll look at many kinds of models, including pathway models of resilience, and we'll look at models of intervention and examples of intervention. In the third part of the class we'll talk about children in disaster, including research from natural disasters, as well as technological or compounded disasters. A compounded, disaster is something like the tragedy at Fukushima Nuclear Plant which started off because of first an earthquake, than a tsunami wave that was very destructive, and then the meltdown of that nuclear plant. That is a classic example of a compound, multi-stage disaster. We'll look at the evidence, what's been learned about the effects of disaster on children and what makes a difference for them. And we'll try to draw some lessons at the end of that unit on disaster preparedness. In the fourth unit, we'll talk about children in war and terror. And we'll look at case examples ranging from a child survivor of the genocide in 1918 in Ukraine to a modern child soldier and other case examples. And we'll look at important research for more recent times, ever since 9/11. There's been a lot of research on children in different kinds of situations, children who are living with war, children who've been kidnapped as child soldiers, children who are recovering from terror attacks. And also we'll take a look at the adolescents who volunteer to join political conflicts. What do we know about that situation? And finally in that unit we'll ask a very important question, do we know something that might inform what we could do working with children that might promote peace? Because clearly war and terror are not good for child development. In the fifth unit, we'll take a look at what I've called ordinary magic. What are the major findings from the global literature on what really makes a difference? We'll talk about the adaptive systems in human life, in biology, and culture that power the capacity to recover from adversity, rhe, the engines of resilience. And these are found in the child, in the family, in schools, culture and societies. And we'll talk about why I refer to this as ordinary magic. In the final unit, we'll be wrapping up and we're going to talk about several different themes. One is a framework for intervention. If you're planning to take action to try to promote resilience, children can't wait for all the research to be done. We have to act based on our best knowledge of what to do, and I'm going to present a general framework for how to plan interventions, policies or other actions to promote resilience. I'm going to talk about enduring controversies in the science of resilience. There are number of them. Here's a couple of examples. Is resilience a trait? I would answer that question, no. But I'll talk more about that. Is there a cost to resilience? That's kind of a tricky question, which we'll, we'll take a look at. I'll also talk more about new horizons in the research on resilience. What's, what's exciting right now? What does the future look like in this area of science? And in particular, we'll talk about the neurobiology of resilience. And also the growing surge of research and interest in cultural processes and globalization, and what we can do about resilience at a global level. And then in the end of that segment we'll do a course wrap-up. On our website for the course, you'll find more detailed instructions about assignments and active learning and how you will accumulate points in this class. You'll find a list, a syllabus with lists of readings and assignments. There will be a weekly quiz about each unit with ten questions, and you can take that quiz as many times as you'd like to. Those will be multiple choice and there'll be some active learning assignments. For example, very early in the course you have a assignment to interview someone about the idea of resilience and you, I'll be talking more about that and you can learn more about that on the course page. And you'll also, I hope, be participating in forum discussions of some of the interesting questions we're going to be dealing with in this course. There are a hundred points available in this class and you, a passing grade is going to be seventy points and you can accumulate points primarily through answering quiz questions correctly. But also through some of these active learning activities in the course. And again, see the course site for more details. There is a certificate signature track available for this course and you can learn more about that as well on our course site. So welcome to the course, and I hope you'll be joining me throughout these six units.
