Promoting resilience among Sesotho-speaking adolescent girls: Lessons for South African teachers

Teachers are a crucial part of young people’s social ecologies. Considering that black South African adolescent girls remain the most marginalised group in South Africa, the purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study has been to explore if and how teachers champion resilience among black adolescent girls living in rural contexts of structural adversity. Using Draw-and-Talk and Draw-and-Write methods, 28 Sesotho-speaking adolescent girls from the Free State Province of South Africa generated a total of 68 drawings. The drawings were analysed using inductive content analysis. The findings include teachers actively listen and provide guidance; teachers motivate girls towards positive futures; and teachers initiate teacher-girl partnerships. These findings prompt three strategies to support teachers’ championship of resilience, namely pre-empt support; advocate for a changed education landscape; and communicate constructive messages.Keywords: adolescent girls; resilience; rural; Sesotho-speaking; social ecology; structural adversity; teacher(s

Community-based participatory video: Exploring and advocating for girls’ resilience

Resilience studies typically privilege the views and assumptions of minority-world research. One way to circumvent this is through methodologies that give voice to the experiences of majority-world youth. Our aim in this article is to reflect critically on the use of community-based participatory video (CBPV) to understand and promote resilience processes in 28 black South African adolescent girls. The girls, aged from13 to19 years, were recruited by social workers and teachers collaborating with the South African Pathways to Resilience Project. The findings suggest that CBPV does champion participant-directed understandings of resilience. However, the findings also draw attention to the difficulties of realising the potential of the social change inherent in CBPV, and the complexity of stimulating deep reflection in the girl participants

Critical review of studies of South African youth resilience, 1990–2008

Given the growing emphasis in research and service provision on strengths rather than deficits, the focus on youth support in the South African Children’s Act of 2005 and the lack of educational, therapeutic and other resources for most South Africans, insight into, and transdisciplinary commitment to, resilience is crucial. Resilience, or the phenomenon of ‘bouncing back’ from adversity, is common to societies that grapple with threatened well-being. Increasingly, international resilience studies have suggested that the capacity to rebound is nurtured by multiple resources that protect against risk and that these resources are rooted in culture. In this paper, we critically reviewed 23 articles that focus on South African youth resilience, published in academic journals between 1990 and 2008. By broadly comparing South African findings to those of international studies, we argued for continued research into the phenomenon of resilience and for a keener focus on the cultural and contextual roots of resilience that are endemic to South Africa. Although international resilience research has begun to match the antecedents of resilience to specific contexts and/or cultures, South African research hardly does so. Only when this gap in youth resilience research is addressed, will psychologists, service providers, teachers and communities be suitably equipped to enable South African youth towards sustained resilience

Critical review of studies of South African youth resilience, 1990–2008

Given the growing emphasis in research and service provision on strengths rather than deficits, the focus on youth support in the South African Children’s Act of 2005 and the lack of educational, therapeutic and other resources for most South Africans, insight into, and transdisciplinary commitment to, resilience is crucial. Resilience, or the phenomenon of ‘bouncing back’ from adversity, is common to societies that grapple with threatened well-being. Increasingly, international resilience studies have suggested that the capacity to rebound is nurtured by multiple resources that protect against risk and that these resources are rooted in culture. In this paper, we critically reviewed 23 articles that focus on South African youth resilience, published in academic journals between 1990 and 2008. By broadly comparing South African findings to those of international studies, we argued for continued research into the phenomenon of resilience and for a keener focus on the cultural and contextual roots of resilience that are endemic to South Africa. Although international resilience research has begun to match the antecedents of resilience to specific contexts and/or cultures, South African research hardly does so. Only when this gap in youth resilience research is addressed, will psychologists, service providers, teachers and communities be suitably equipped to enable South African youth towards sustained resilience

The inhibitors and enablers of emerging adult COVID-19 mitigation compliance in a township context.

Young adults are often scapegoated for not complying with COVID-19 mitigation strategies. While studies have investigated what predicts this population’s compliance and non-compliance, they have largely excluded the insights of African young people living in South African townships. Given this, it is unclear what places young adult South African township dwellers at risk for not complying with physical distancing, face masking and handwashing, or what enables resilience to those risks. To remedy this uncertainty, the current article reports a secondary analysis of transcripts (n=119) that document telephonic interviews in June and October 2020 with 24 emerging adults (average age: 20 years) who participated in the Resilient Youth in Stressed Environments (RYSE) study. The secondary analysis, which was inductively thematic, pointed to compliance being threatened by forgetfulness; preventive measures conflicting with personal/collective style; and structural constraints. Resilience to these compliance risks lay in young people’s capacity to regulate their behaviour and in the immediate social ecology’s capacity to co-regulate young people’s health behaviours. These findings discourage health interventions that are focused on the individual. More optimal public health initiatives will be responsive to the risks and resilience-enablers associated with young people and the social, institutional, and physical ecologies to which young people are connected.Significance:• Emerging adult compliance with COVID-19 mitigation strategies is threatened by risks across multiple systems (i.e. young people themselves; the social ecology; the physical ecology).• Emerging adult resilience to compliance challenges is co-facilitated by young people and their social ecologies.• Responding adaptively to COVID-19 contagion threats will require multisystem mobilisation that is collaborative and transformative in its redress of risk and co-championship of resilience-enablers

Resilience to COVID-19 challenges: lessons for school psychologists serving school-attending youth with experiences of marginalization

This special issue is focused on the lessons learned from the COVID-19 health crisis, showcasing new cross-cultural research from different countries, such as rural/urban US, South Africa, and Australia. The aim οf the special issue is to highlight new knowledge related to pandemic-related impacts, as well as underscore variables that will promote children's resilience and especially vulnerable and marginalized children. We argue that all adults associated with schools (e.g., teachers, school psychologists, administrators, aides, parents, and social workers) need to synergize in creating a caring school community that is purposefully committed to supporting student resilience, especially among students with experiences of marginalization. A multisystemic resilience approach has been adopted and the focus has been on caring adults in the school communities and how they can support the most vulnerable students if the adults (school psychologists parents, caregivers, teachers, and other role-players) take co-ownership of championing student resilience in times of crisis. The studies included in this special issue highlight important issues especially for school psychologists, such as girls’ school engagement as a buffering factor to school disruptions, the value of multigenerational supports, the value of spirituality in dealing with crises, the sense of supportive connectedness with schools and finally teacher empowerment to support student wellbeing.https://journals.sagepub.com/home/SPIhj2024Educational PsychologySDG-04:Quality Educatio

Community-based participatory video: Exploring and advocating for girls’ resilience

Resilience studies typically privilege the views and assumptions of minority-world research. One way to circumvent this is through methodologies that give voice to the experiences of majority-world youth. Our aim in this article is to reflect critically on the use of community-based participatory video (CBPV) to understand and promote resilience processes in 28 black South African adolescent girls. The girls, aged from13 to19 years, were recruited by social workers and teachers collaborating with the South African Pathways to Resilience Project. The findings suggest that CBPV does champion participant-directed understandings of resilience. However, the findings also draw attention to the difficulties of realising the potential of the social change inherent in CBPV, and the complexity of stimulating deep reflection in the girl participants

Resilience and mental health : how multisystemic processes contribute to positive outcomes

More is known about the factors that predict mental disorder than about the factors and processes that promote positive development among individuals exposed to atypically high levels of stress or adversity. In this brief Review of the science of resilience, we show that the concept is best understood as the process of multiple biological, psychological, social, and ecological systems interacting in ways that help individuals to regain, sustain, or improve their mental wellbeing when challenged by one or more risk factors. Studies in fields as diverse as genetics, psychology, political science, architecture, and human ecology are showing that resilience depends just as much on the culturally relevant resources available to stressed individuals in their social, built, and natural environments as it does on individual thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. With growing interest in resilience among mental health-care providers, there is a need to recognise the complex interactions across systems that predict which individuals will do well and to use this insight to advance mental health interventions.http://www.thelancet.com/psychiatry2021-05-01hj2020Educational Psycholog

Digital storytelling with South African youth : a critical reflection

PURPOSE : In this paper the authors share, and reflect critically on, the experience of using digital storytelling (DS) methods in a South African township. We interrogate the innovations prompted as we operationalized DS in a context that has historically prized collectivist values and that experiences chronic resource constraints. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH : The authors ask: How can DS be optimally used to understand youth resilience in a collectivist, developing context? The authors worked with 18 older adolescents (aged 18–24) during two day-long events. The authors provide detailed descriptions of the method used, and offer reflections focusing on narrative, visuals and technology-mediation. FINDINGS : This study concludes by sharing four key lessons learned during the project. First, revisit the definition of “story” for your context, participant group and time. Second, a slower process yields more meaningful product. Third, facilitator competence matters. Finally, advance and deeper thinking about the ways in which technology will be used leads to richer research outcomes. ORIGINALITY/VALUE : The paper reflects on the interplay between the transactional nature of contemporary digitally-mediated methods in a low-resource setting and with a seldom-heard population, and it's relationship with the ancient local traditions of story-making and audiencing.The British Academy Newton Mobility Fund.https://www.emerald.com/insight/publication/issn/1443-9883hj2023Educational Psycholog

Limiting the impacts of child abuse and neglect by understanding which supports matter most : a differential impact approach

No abstract available.http://www.elsevier.com/locate/chiabuneg2019-04-01hj2019Educational Psycholog