ABSTRACT
Amidst growing social and political concern about children and young people’s mental health, claims to build or enhance resilience are highly appealing. This chapter describes how the meanings have important moral and practical implications in educational and other social policy settings. Policy discourses have privileged resilience as a key trait or attribute in character education, with this considered a way of addressing social disadvantage and social problems. Within a social ecological framework, generating resilience involves transactions between an individual and their environment. The discourse of resilience suggests that children, rather than educational approaches, institutions or regimes, or wider educational and social systems, are problematic and need to change. The chapter highlights questions about the ecological relevance of the interventions and their wider social effects. It argues that psycho-behavioural approaches should not be the dominant policy or professional approach to supporting young people’s well-being.
