<![CDATA[Students with special needs in inclusive elementary schools face academic, communication, social, and emotional challenges, yet school counseling for them in Indonesia remains largely incidental and is rarely planned to build resilience. This study aimed to develop and preliminarily evaluate a positive psychology-based counseling model for strengthening resilience among students with special needs. A Research and Development design adapted from Gall, Gall, and Borg was implemented through eight stages, from needs assessment to dissemination. Forty purposively selected students with physical, sensory, intellectual, and mental or emotional disabilities from three public elementary schools in Mataram City participated: ten in the preliminary trial and thirty in the main field trial. Resilience was measured with the ten-item child version of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, supported by observations, interviews, and documentation. The final model comprised eight sessions over four weeks covering positive-emotion recognition, gratitude, strengths spotting, self-affirmation, emotion regulation, prosocial relationships, meaning reflection, and strength integration. Mean resilience scores rose from 59.50 to 67.58 in the preliminary trial and from 60.37 to 69.53 in the main trial, and both increases were statistically significant at the .05 level. Qualitative data showed more positive emotional expression, confidence, emotion regulation, persistence, adaptive problem solving, and prosocial interaction. The model is a promising and feasible school-based approach for inclusive settings, although controlled and longitudinal studies are needed to confirm its causal effects]]>
