Resilience over time: Learning from school‐attending adolescents living in conditions of structural inequality

Abstract

Introduction: Cross-sectional studies offer inadequate understandings of adolescent resilience. Nevertheless, few longitudinal studies account for the resilience of school-attending adolescents challenged by the structural disadvantages associated with South African township residence. This prompts two questions: (i) Do the same (or different) resilience-enabling resources inform township-dwelling, school-attending adolescents' resilience accounts when they self-explain their resilience at two distinct points in time? (ii) Which resilience-enabling resources, if any, become significantly more (or less) salient over time and how do township-dwelling, school-attending adolescents explain the resilience-enabling value of these resources?Methods: To answer the aforementioned, we conducted a longitudinal qualitative study with 140, township-dwelling, school-attending, South African adolescents (62.1% girls; mean age: 13.8 years [Time 1]; 15.8 years [Time 2]). They completed a draw-and-write activity. This generated visual and narrative data that we analysed using multiple methods (content analyses, chi square tests of frequency counts, and thematic analysis). Results: A comparison of school-attending adolescents' accounts of their resilience at two points in time revealed the longevity of nine, generic resilience-enabling resources. A comparison of how frequently adolescents reported these resources at Time 1 and 2 showed significant increases for education, faith-based supports, and peer support. A comparison of adolescents' reasons for identifying these three resources showed that education promises an improved future, while all three facilitate respite from hardship and/or mastery over current challenges. Conclusion:The salience of education, faith-based supports, and peer support can be explained using developmental, contextual and cultural perspectives. This explanation prompts pragmatic and cautionary lessons for resilience advocates.Because adolescent resilience is understood to be a dynamic process that varies over time, cross-sectional (i.e., once-off) studies that account for how adversity-exposed adolescents develop well offer sub-optimal explanations of processes of positive adjustment (Masten, 2014). Cognisant of this caveat, a substantial number of resilience studies have followed cohorts of children in order to better understand what enables and constrains human resilience. Across these studies, positive outcomes in the face or aftermath of adversity (i.e., resilience) are associated with personal strengths (such as impulse control, self-esteem, or being motivated to achieve) and systemic enablers (such as supportive family, constructive peer relationships, or quality schooling) (see Werner, 2013). However, among the published studies that have focused explicitly on explaining adolescent resilience over time, only two have been conducted with a South African adolescent cohort (i.e.,

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