The APA Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools (TOPSS) is pleased to announce the winners for the 2021 APA TOPSS Competition for High School Psychology Students. Each winner will receive a $250 scholarship award.
- Grace Hu of Ladue Horton Watkins High School (St. Louis), “Intersectionality and Resilience: A Psychological Approach to Resilience and Responses to Trauma”
- Ivani Shantilal, Carlucci American International School of Lisbon (Sintra, Portugal), “Building Resilience in Relation to Stress or Trauma”
- Eshwar Venkataswamy, Phillips Academy (Andover, Massachusetts), “Building Resilience with Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction”
- Abigail Yang, PA Homeschoolers (Kittanning, Pennsylvania), “Apprehending the Concept of Resilience: A Psychological Perspective on Resilience in Daily Life”
Students were invited to write an essay of no more than 3,000 words that addressed the topic of resilience in relation to stress or trauma. The essays described the current psychological understanding of resilience and could use recent events to support student ideas. Students could draw upon any approach to psychology that could include, but was not limited to, topics such as cognition, personality, biopsychology, and health psychology. Students discussed identifiable psychological concepts that have contributed to the definition of resilience and discussed, using identifiable psychological concepts, how resilience can be developed. Students also described ways in which applying psychological science’s understanding of resilience and the development of resilience can be made available to societies and individuals.
