Exploring risk and resilience among expectant school-going learners in the Tshwane District

Abstract

The phenomenon of teenage pregnancy is growing worldwide, causing a lot of concern among parents, teachers and authorities in education. In South Africa, pregnant learners are allowed to continue to attend school until they give birth. However, it is not yet known how these children cope with pregnancies and school contemporaneously. Often, schools are not ready to support learners who fall pregnant. Many of them drop out of school and never return. Some of them fall pregnant again while they are out of school. The resilience of learners who are with child in schools has been less explored especially in South Africa. There is much speculation as to what puts these learners at risk of pregnancy. There are no known campaigns and programs to enhance adaptive coping in learners with child in schools in South Africa. The aim of this qualitative study was to explore the resilience of expectant school-going teenagers with a view to develop guidelines for resilience-focused interventions to support them. The study was designed as a multiple case studies research, involving 31 expectant learners in schools in Tshwane. There is a call for children to be studied directly, using participatory, child-friendly methodologies. The researcher in this study headed this call. Data were generated through the draw-and-write technique and processed through inductive content analysis. Generally, the findings show that learners with child in secondary schools in Tshwane, experienced personal and socioecological resilience risks. These learners coped resiliently through a complex combination of personal and socioecological resilience resources. The findings provide caveats to parents, teachers, researchers, and mental healthcare practitioners to be woke to these risks and resilience resources. In planning resilience-focused interventions, these resilience processes should be considered. Collaboration is strongly encouraged. The findings surely inform primary and secondary intervention programmes for teenage girls.