Transformational Resilience: A Metacognitive Model of Growth Following Educational Disruption

Educational disruption, such as dropping out, significantly impacts adolescents' well-being, academic trajectories, and life opportunities. Although nearly half of students who drop out eventually return to education, traditional resilience frameworks—primarily emphasizing external supports or stable personal traits—do not fully capture the psychological processes that enable these returns. Through extensive qualitative research, including retrospective interviews with students who prematurely left school, GED returnees, and students experiencing long-term suspension, I identified a distinctive resilience pathway termed Transformational Resilience (TR). The TR model reveals a curvilinear pattern in which adolescents initially maintain strong educational values but experience diminished metacognitive clarity during acute adversity, such as dropout events. Over time, these students actively revisit their core values, identify values-driven goals, engage in self-compassionate reflection, and strategically apply “balanced agency”—processes unified through metacognitive awareness. Pilot school-based interventions using a psychology-themed metacognitive curriculum, called "Be Your Own Scientist," demonstrate adolescents' capacity to develop these reflective, planning, and self-regulatory skills. By conceptualizing resilience as a teachable skill and illustrating that adversity can foster meaningful growth rather than mere recovery, the TR model provides theoretical insights and practical strategies for researchers, educators, and practitioners committed to reducing dropout rates, enhancing educational persistence, and supporting adolescent development.