Skinner and Vygotsky’s Understanding of Resilience in the School Environment

Abstract

Resilience is defined as the ability to endure situations of risk, overcome them and use them as sources of life strengthening and learning. This paper aims to analyze resilience in the school environment according to two classic perspectives in education: radical behaviorism (Skinner) and the socio-historical approach (Vygotsky). According to the socio-historical perspective, resilience can be understood as a higher psychological function resulting from an individual’s self-regulatory processes. According to the behavioural approach, whenever a person is exposed to aversive situations and finds strategies to remove them, avoidance skills are developed in order to find sources of reinforcement even during adversity. Both approaches consider that resilience is socially and culturally built, nevertheless, the need exists to consider the epistemological and conceptual differences between the two authors.