From setbacks to strength: How can schools develop pupils' resilience skills? A pilot case study

Bowering, Myfanwy 2026. From setbacks to strength: How can schools develop pupils' resilience skills? A pilot case study. EdD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

Improving pupils’ emotional wellbeing and resilience is a central priority of the Curriculum for Wales. However, there remains limited evidence on how whole-school resilience approaches are enacted in practice or how they interact with pupils’ psychological and socio-demographic characteristics within real-world school settings. This thesis presents a mixed-methods case study of a whole-school resilience intervention implemented in a secondary school in Wales. Adopting a critical realist and pragmatist methodological orientation, the study was designed as an embedded single-case mixed-methods investigation. The quantitative strand employed a repeated cross-sectional cohort design, using anonymous pupil survey data collected at three timepoints across one academic year (September 2023, February 2024, July 2024). Measures included self-esteem (Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale), perceived control (reverse-coded Childhood Nowicki–Strickland Locus of Control Scale), and resilience (Child and Youth Resilience Measure). Analyses examined cohort-level associations and changes over time, alongside demographic patterning by gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic position. The qualitative strand comprised semi-structured interviews with teaching staff, examining how resilience was understood, enacted, and sustained within everyday school practice. As an insider researcher, the author’s positionality enabled multi-level access and contextual insight, supported through explicit reflexivity and methodological safeguards. Quantitative analyses, including Pearson correlations, linear regression models, and one-way ANOVA comparisons across survey waves, demonstrated a stable, moderate-to-strong association between perceived control and self-esteem across all survey waves, with limited demographic differences. No clear adverse cohort-level patterns were identified in the measured psychological outcomes during the intervention period, although the study design does not permit these patterns to be attributed to the intervention. Qualitative findings highlighted the importance of shared language, staff modelling, leadership continuity, and systemic constraints in shaping implementation. The thesis contributes empirically and methodologically to the literature on school-based wellbeing by demonstrating how a resilience initiative operated within a complex educational system, and by identifying contextual conditions relevant to transferability and future evaluation.

Item Type:	Thesis (EdD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Schools > School of Social and Spatial Sciences
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	19 October 2026
Last Modified:	20 Oct 2026 08:40
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/190274

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