Parrott, Elinor;
(2025)
Fostering post-disaster resilience through schools.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
Despite disasters’ devastating impacts, disaster-affected communities can be highly resilient. However, the literature on resilience building post-disaster is dominated by top-down conceptualisations that lack local perspectives. Furthermore, although schools offer young people well-established pathways to mitigate post-disaster risk and foster resilience, research lacks consideration of schools’ role from the students’ and teachers’ perspective, particularly in low resource contexts. Teachers may feel inadequately prepared, and their own post-disaster mental health is rarely considered. This thesis aims to understand the resilience needs of disaster-exposed educational communities in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, to inform a culturally sensitive intervention that empowers teachers to support resilient school-based recovery. This thesis explores disaster survivors’ (n = 127) conceptualisations of community resilience based on a content analysis of open-ended questions. Additionally, thematic analysis of data from free association interviews elucidates teachers’ (n = 40) subjective sources of distress and strength, as well as students’ (n = 46) and teachers’ sense of teachers’ and schools’ post-disaster roles. Having synthesised these findings, a strengths-based intervention for teachers (n = 37) is developed, implemented and evaluated. Results establish that educational communities value community cohesion and participation, including sociocultural coping strategies rooted in collectivism, such as gotong royong (mutual help) and tutura (oral storytelling). Participants also utilise intrapersonal coping strategies to foster resilience, often interlinked with religiosity. Most students conceptualise teachers as supporting their recovery, which aligns with teachers’ reported commitment to their support- based role. Nevertheless, findings highlight that teachers would benefit from psychosocial support regarding numerous disaster-related stressors. Three months after participation in a resilience-based intervention, teachers report improvements in resilient recovery measures. The thesis offers novel empirical insights into disaster survivors’ conceptualisations of resilience and schools’ role in building it. Practical recommendations are presented, including how schools can effectively foster resilience and an efficacious and well-accepted intervention for teachers.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Fostering post-disaster resilience through schools |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2025. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10204005 |
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