BECE. Newsletter 

Vol.18, No.2, 2024, BECE 1919 

 

 

 

 

The Effects of Thematic Reading on Mental Resilience 

Development in Rural Left-Behind Children: An Em-

pirical Study 

By Feng, L. & Jiang, Y. 
Correspondence to: Yingjie Jiang, Northeast China Normal University, China. 

E-mail: editorial-office@bonoi.org  

ENTAL resilience is the ability to cope with difficult situations that 

happens in the individual’s life, conducive to their adaptation to 

change and uncertainty in addressing setbacks. It is of vital importance for 

mental health. Mental resilience development is an essential component of 

mental health education for basic education children. Rural primary schools 

in China have a high proportion of left-behind children of migrant workers, 

whose mental health, including mental resilience issue, is a major concern of 

the public. Based on the reading therapy theory, this empirical study aims to 

examine the effects of thematic reading on mental resilience development in 

rural left-behind children with a sample of 83 third and fourth graders from a 

primary school in northern Hebei province. The subjects were divided into 

the experimental group (consisting of students scoring lower on the mental 

resilience questionnaire) and the control group (consisting of students scor-

ing higher on the questionnaire). A two-month thematic reading course was 

administered to the experimental group. 

Research Findings: 

• The between-group comparison shows that the reading interven-

tion successfully bridged the gap in mental resilience between 

the experimental and control groups 

• The intra-group comparison indicates that significant mental re-

silience improvement occurred in students with the experimental 

group after the intervention, whereas there was no change in the 

mental resilience level among students with the control group in 

the two months. 

The research findings demonstrate the effectiveness of well-structured, 

purposeful reading training in improving the mental resilience of rural left-

behind children. The study also proves the malleability of mental resilience 

in primary school children, lending support to the idea of “the age of 11 or 

below being the preferable age for mental resilience development,” popular 

in the mental resilience research community. 

 

M 

mailto:editorial-office@bonoi.org


 

Vol.18, No.2, 2024, BECE 1920 

Source: Journal of Teaching and Management, 2024; 2024(18):67-70.