Building adolescents’ resilience: teachers’ support, perceived cooperative and competitive climates, and mindset

Introduction Resilience helps adolescents persist in challenging situations and recover from setbacks. Methods This study examined how several school-related contextual factors (i.e., perceived cooperative and competitive climate and teachers’ academic and emotional support) and one individual factor (i.e., mindset) related to three components of resilience (i.e., self-efficacy, perseverance, and sense of meaning in life) among a sample of U.S. adolescents, using the Programme for International Student Assessment 2018 data. Results Overall, the findings revealed that all examined factors positively predicted adolescents’ resilience. Additionally, while teachers’ support as well as perceived competitive climate positively predicted mindset, perceived cooperative climate was negatively linked to mindset. Moreover, an indirect effect through mindset was observed only for teachers’ academic support. Discussion The findings suggest that fostering resilience in adolescents may require a comprehensive approach, emphasizing the role of teachers’ academic support, emotional understanding, a balance between cooperative and competitive learning climates, and promotion of a growth mindset.