Intellectual Resilience – Draft of a New Educational Approach for the Geography Classroom

Major crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic put societies to the test. The conjuncture of globalization, with all its challenging transformation processes, social inequality, and the epidemic spread of a new (viral) pathogen has fuelled feelings of uncertainty and insecurity in virtually every part of society, on a global scale. Focusing on learners, this paper proposes ‘intellectual resilience’ as a new educational concept aiming to empower learners to more fully comprehend and navigate global crises. An intellectually resilient person is defined as someone who can use multiple scientific approaches and concepts in a participative, democratically informed way. The aim is to explore the potential of school geography education to support young learners in handling crisis situations.