FOSTERING THE EDUCATIONAL RESILIENCE OF CHILDREN AND YOUTH IN AT-RISK CIRCUMSTANCES

Fostering the Educational Resilience of Children and Youth in At-Risk Circumstances



Fostering the Educational Resilience of Children and Youth in At-Risk Circumstances

Section 1: Resilience and Risk

Introduction

Street children exhibit powerful signs of resilience, albeit hidden. 'Hidden resilience' is a relatively novel concept, which refers to patterns of living that may not always fit in with mainstream psychological theories, or community conceptualization, of socially appropriate behaviour, but that nevertheless encourage youth to bounce back from hardship. Traditionally, street children are not viewed as resilient. Rather, they are conceptualized as vulnerable, deviant, and maladaptive youth who suffer from a range of psychological disorders (Castro, 2010, 375-403).

Defining Educational Disadvantage

The phrase has been undertaken for the purpose and objective of highlighting situations where children and adults, mainly from disadvantaged economic and social backgrounds, do less well at school than others. Their patterns of living and risk are seen as almost synonymous: in addition to the complex social and familial risks that compel street children to choose life on the streets, on the street, they are vulnerable to all sorts of additional risks such as reckless motorists, inadequate shelter, abusive police officers, drugs, crime, prostitution syndicates, and bigger/older street youth who taunt and intimidate them. More recently, some emerging literature has begun to challenge the notion of street children as helpless and hapless beings. This is where we position our article.

Drawing on emergent literature that describes street youth as hardy and our work with street children, our aim is to delineate the antecedents of hidden resilience in and among street children and to demonstrate that street children do navigate towards, and negotiate for, resilience resources, albeit in unconventional ways. In this sense, we argue for the recognition of street children as resilient and acknowledgement that their resilience is often obscured by societal attitudes and practitioner expectations that these children are vulnerable. Health care professionals, as well as social service practitioners, will note from this article that street children have individual assets that, combined with ecological resources, enable resilience (Rutter, 2008, 3-22).

As such, our article has the potential to move street children theory away from a deficit approach and to contribute to a transformed perspective of street children. Our findings have the potential to nudge practice away from the traditional medical-model treatment approach that focuses on what is wrong towards an asset-based approach that conceptualizes street youth as co-authors of their enablement.

The phenomenon of resilience among street children as a group of at-risk youth goes unnoticed, since they are not typically regarded as resilient. Street children are mostly categorized as vulnerable youth who need care and support, and this deficit view ignores the assets and resources that enable them towards resilience. Nevertheless, street children are remarkably resilient (Zautra,2010, 3-34).

Using a qualitative approach (semi-structured and focus group interviews), we explore the hidden resilience of 20 street youths in the Free State and Gauteng. The findings transform the popular conceptualization of street youth as vulnerable ...