Education services and resilience processes: Resilient Black South African students' experiences

Abstract

The resilience literature is increasingly drawing attention to formal service provision as a means for social ecologies to support children's and youths' positive adjustment to challenging life circumstances. This article interrogates the universality and simplicity of this argument. Using a secondary data analysis of the life stories of 16 resilient, Black South African students from impoverished families, we show that education services

predominated students' childhood and youth experience of formal support and that there was scant experience of other formal services. We theorise that contextual and cultural specifics informed the dominance of education services. However, this service did not consistently facilitate resilience processes. When it did, education services were characterised by active teacher-community connectedness and student responsiveness. Moreover, education service providers (i.e., teachers and principals) engaged in supportive actions that went beyond the scope of typical teacher tasks. Thus, we suggest that formal service facilitation of resilience processes is complex. It requires collaborative activity that might well demand atypical service acts.