The main focus of this study was to explore how personal constructions, consisting of latent and conscious schema, and obtained from a culturally sensitive interpretation of the RCS, informed the transactional resilience of Black South African adolescents. This study was motivated in view of limited knowledge available about the (i) processes that are generic to the resilience-promoting transactions of Black South African adolescents and (ii) to potentiate insight into an adolescent’s construction of personal meaning of her conscious and unconscious experiences that may not always be easily recognised in her overt behaviour or by self-report measures often used in South African resilience research. Six Black South African adolescents aged 14 to 16 years volunteered to take part in this multiple case study. The participants were identified as resilient by an advisory panel consisting of learners and educators at an English-medium school in the Vaal Triangle area. In this essentially qualitative study, qualitative data obtained from an unstructured individual interview, unstructured observations, and a follow-up interview were integrated with the data obtained from a culturally sensitive, conceptual interpretation of these Black adolescents’ Rorschach protocols. The structural, quantitative data obtained from specific indicators in Exner’s Comprehensive System were interpreted in a culturally sensitive manner and integrated with the qualitative data obtained from the Rorschach protocols. A culturally sensitive, conceptual framework for interpreting Rorschach indicators associated with adolescents’ transactional resilience was provided. These findings indicated individual and ecological protective resources well known within South African resilience research. Findings that contributed new understanding of the transactional processes associated with Black South African adolescent resilience were also obtained. Four case-specific self-reflective strategies were identified, namely, emotional stoicism, frequent introspection, honouring the past, and adopting a new identity. These selfreflective strategies served as the participants’ unique ways of compensating for their adversity-informed schema as well as encouraging them to navigate towards the sustained support of specific significant others and resilience-promoting ecological resources. The participants indicated that attachment challenges brought about repressed feelings and specific security needs, which shaped their resilience-promoting navigation and enabled them to self-knit in a resilient way. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Education))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2011

Divorce is an ever-present phenomenon in society. This is also true for white Afrikaans-speaking adolescents. Some of these adolescents seem to cope resiliently with the risk inherent in divorce while others struggle to cope. I wanted to determine what protective factors and processes are present in the lives of white Afrikaans-speaking adolescents who do function resiliently. The aims of the study were to explain what adolescent resilience means, document the impact of divorce on adolescents, conduct an empirical study to determine what protective factors and processes contribute to resilience, and to develop resilience promoting guidelines in the form of a concept program for Life Orientation educators and other service providers who might encourage resilience among white Afrikaans-speaking adolescents from divorced families. The study followed the prescriptions of the International Youth Resilience Study (IYRS), which includes a triangulated mixed method design. An advisory panel drawn from the communities of the participants helped to develop site specific questions and to identify resilient and non-resilient white Afrikaans-speaking adolescents from divorced families from different schools in three provinces. In total, 64 participants completed the Child and Youth Resilience measure (CYRM) and ten resilient adolescents were interviewed using semi-structured interviews. The resulting findings suggested that protective factors and processes inherent to the individual, relationships, the community and culture helped the resilient adolescents to cope adaptively with their parents' divorce. In line with more recent thinking, the findings confirmed that protective resources that encourage resilience are group-specific. Using the protective factors and processes identified by the participants, I compiled a concept programme to encourage adolescents from white Afrikaans-speaking divorced families to function more resiliently. The concept programme includes a ten-session, group intervention programme for adolescents and complementary workshops for their parents, educators, friends and community leaders. The concept programme was not implemented and so a future intervention study is recommended to test the concept programme. Future studies could also look at the relevance of the programme for adolescents from divorced families in other cultures. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Education))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2009.

The main focus of this study was to explore how personal constructions, consisting of latent and conscious schema, and obtained from a culturally sensitive interpretation of the RCS, informed the transactional resilience of Black South African adolescents. This study was motivated in view of limited knowledge available about the (i) processes that are generic to the resilience-promoting transactions of Black South African adolescents and (ii) to potentiate insight into an adolescent’s construction of personal meaning of her conscious and unconscious experiences that may not always be easily recognised in her overt behaviour or by self-report measures often used in South African resilience research. Six Black South African adolescents aged 14 to 16 years volunteered to take part in this multiple case study. The participants were identified as resilient by an advisory panel consisting of learners and educators at an English-medium school in the Vaal Triangle area. In this essentially qualitative study, qualitative data obtained from an unstructured individual interview, unstructured observations, and a follow-up interview were integrated with the data obtained from a culturally sensitive, conceptual interpretation of these Black adolescents’ Rorschach protocols. The structural, quantitative data obtained from specific indicators in Exner’s Comprehensive System were interpreted in a culturally sensitive manner and integrated with the qualitative data obtained from the Rorschach protocols. A culturally sensitive, conceptual framework for interpreting Rorschach indicators associated with adolescents’ transactional resilience was provided. These findings indicated individual and ecological protective resources well known within South African resilience research. Findings that contributed new understanding of the transactional processes associated with Black South African adolescent resilience were also obtained. Four case-specific self-reflective strategies were identified, namely, emotional stoicism, frequent introspection, honouring the past, and adopting a new identity. These selfreflective strategies served as the participants’ unique ways of compensating for their adversity-informed schema as well as encouraging them to navigate towards the sustained support of specific significant others and resilience-promoting ecological resources. The participants indicated that attachment challenges brought about repressed feelings and specific security needs, which shaped their resilience-promoting navigation and enabled them to self-knit in a resilient way. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Education))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2011

The purpose of this study is to describe and explore the happiness, sense of coherence and resilience of rural teachers from a positive psychology framework where positive and healthy adaptation is emphasized. This study forms part of the dissemination phase of a longitudinal study known as STAR (Supportive Teachers Assets and Resilience). Completed questionnaires by twelve rural teachers in STAR schools (2 primary and 1 secondary) in rural Mpumalanga were purposively sampled as data sources for secondary analysis. The measures included the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (OHQ), Resilience Scale (RS-14) and the Orientation to Life Questionnaire (SOC-13). Results are presented as descriptive and non-parametric statistics. Results indicated that teachers possess High Moderate to High levels of happiness, Moderate to High Moderate sense of coherence, and High Moderate to high levels of resilience. There was no significant relationship between happiness, sense of coherence and resilience. No significant differences were observed between levels of happiness, sense of coherence and resilience of teachers in (Pre- STAR intervention and post- STAR intervention); nor with regards to gender. Theorizing the findings of this study within the theoretical framework of positive psychology indicates that despite significant risk and adversity, teachers are able to demonstrate positive psychological constructs in the form of happiness (extraversion, kindness, humor, sense of purpose, aesthetic appreciation, locus of control, positive affect, self-efficacy, physical health and self-esteem ), sense of coherence (comprehensibility, manageability and meaning) and resilience (self-reliance, having a purposeful and meaningful life, equanimity, perseverance and existential aloneness). / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Educational Psychology / unrestricted

Educational psychologists are expected to offer real-world relevant services. One way to strive towards real-word relevance is for educational psychologists to facilitate resilience by using Ungar’s diagnostic criteria of resilience. However, at this time the usefulness of applying Ungar’s criteria is still unexplored. Thus, this study asked: ‘What insight into the resilience of vulnerable rural adolescents can be achieved by applying Ungar’s diagnostic criteria of resilience to the documents (i.e. paper-and-pencil activities) generated in psycho-educational assessments?’ In answering this question, a qualitative secondary data analysis was conducted of psycho-educational paper-and-pencil activities completed by 65 male and female IsiSwati-speaking Grade 9 learners at a secondary school in Mpumalanga, a remote province in South Africa, during the Flourishing Learning Youth (FLY) study. FLY, a project of the Centre for the Study of Resilience, is based at the University of Pretoria. The a priori categories were sourced from Ungar’s diagnostic criteria and the relevant a priori codes from the review of South African resilience literature. The analysis showed that adolescents were challenged by physical risk, emotional risk and poverty-related risk. Additionally, adolescents were protected by personal resources (agency, self-worth), family resources (role models, supportive parentchild interaction), community resources (role models, community belonging), school resources (teachers as role models and supporters) and macro resources (spirituality). These findings echo extant South African resilience studies and enabled the educational psychologist to ‘diagnose’ resilience for this group of adolescents to better understand the risks to their well-being, the resources that can be leveraged to buffer this risk, and the resources that are absent and must be negotiated. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Educational Psychology / MEd / Unrestricted

Students in resource-scarce environments navigate through a multitude of barriers (Richter, 2007). The pathways that individuals travel through towards positive adaptation are far from fixed (Ungar, 2005a), but rather a continuous intersection of navigating through adversity and negotiating supports (Ungar, Brown, Liebenberg, et. al, 2008). Hence, resilience (adapting positively in the face of significant adversity) can be buoyed in a space where support is provided (Ebersöhn & Ferreira, 2011). Scant research warrants whether partnerships with rural schools contribute to fostering positive adaptation of students in relation to their pathways to resilience (measured by educational outcome variables). This study forms part of a larger running longitudinal project, namely: Flourishing Learning Youth (FLY; Ebersöhn & Maree, 2006); a rural school-Educational Psychology partnership which had its inception in 2006. The partnership involves numerous services, specifically career related support to grade nine students and guidance to educators. This retrospective case study (Yin, 2009; Zainal, 2007) utilised a concurrent mixed methods research design (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2007) within a pragmatic lens to study educational pathways to resilience. This was explored by means of qualitatively investigating partnerships, as well as quantitatively examining student access and academic performance (as indicators of educational resilience). The theoretical underpinnings rested on concepts from the Resiliency Wheel (Henderson & Milstein, 1996) through a transactionalecological understanding of resilience in learning. Data collection strategies consisted of: semi-structured interviews with two teacher-participants and retrospective document analysis of school records (performance schedules) for two grade nine cohorts. The cohorts were followed from grade 9 to grade 11. Data analysis techniques consisted of T-Tests and descriptive statistics on sampled documents for the quantitative strand. Through these statistical methods, it was anticipated that patterns in access and performance, could speak to partnerships influence as one factor in students pathways to resilience, or not. Concurrently, thematic analysis of interview transcripts was done for the qualitative strand. The triangulation of these methods assisted in creating a more comprehensive picture of the relationship between partnerships and the outcome variables used to gauge educational pathways to resilience. Results which emerged qualitatively allowed for answering questions surrounding the nature, processes and benefits of partnerships in a rural school, as well as risks and protective resources within and around the school. Quantitative results regarding outcome variables of access and performance highlighted the risks found qualitatively, to indicate that despite observable enabling partnership processes and benefits, students appear to find high academic challenging (in three measured school subjects). A better understanding on the various pathways to resilience of students in resourcescarce environments could assist with appropriate services and interventions that partners may wish to exchange. / Mini-dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / tm2015 / Educational Psychology / MEd / Unrestricted

The purpose of this study was to gain an in-depth understanding of whether or not, and how teachers in a resource-constrained rural school sustain their motivation in and commitment to teaching over a life-span. The Social Cognitive Career Theory was chosen as theoretical framework because it recognises the importance that factors in the environment play when the career paths of individuals unfold. A conceptual framework for ‘teacher career resilience’ was developed by merging current thinking on resilience, teacher resilience and career resilience. The life-history design was framed methodologically as biographical research with participatory principles. Teacher participants (n=5, 3=female and 2=male) were selected according to purposive sampling. Data were generated through participatory interview-conversations, which were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim, as well as memory books, joint photograph-taking and field notes in a researcher diary. Five themes emerged from the guided phenomenological analysis process (Hycner, 1985) and narrative comparison. First, this study exposes illiteracy of learners’ parents, demotivated learners, and a negative national teacher fraternity as sources of adversity not previously noted as significant for teachers in rural settings. Second, rural teachers in this study drew strength from their own life experiences of adversity (being from rural areas themselves); and they relied on their own agency in problem solving. Third, in addition participating rural teachers make use of encouraging memories of their own teachers from childhood and partake in informal professional development activities such as collaborative peer discussions rather than mentoring to grow professionally. Fourth, participating teachers in rural resource-constrained South Africa thus use similar internal protective resources (problem solving, strategizing, cognitive restructuring and emotional regulation) in their adaptive coping repertoire to those of other teachers globally. Fifth, teachers did not enter the teaching profession in the same way as has been documented elsewhere; but entered the teaching profession as a result of socio-political and financial influences, chance happenings and the influence of significant teachers in their past. Teachers seem to balance their use of protective resources between internal and external resources in their current practice. Over time, however they draw more on internal protective resources. Teachers conceptualised their teacher career resilience on a continuum: persevering through adversity, both as young children, and as growing professionals. They use their self-efficacy beliefs, embedded in an adversity drenched past, to manage, overcome and cope despite current chronic adversity. Teachers’ overt behavior in adaptive coping processes was dependent on the interrelatedness between their attributes (especially internal protective resources), the environment (chronic adversity) and the continuous loop of influence (appraisal) between these three factors. Teachers became skilled in resilience processes because of the chronic adversity they face. Teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs about their adaptive coping extended beyond what they themselves can achieve to what their efforts in teaching may mean to model hope to learners, as their teachers modelled to them, fostering a certain altruistic career anchor. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Educational Psychology / unrestricted

Against the background of various socio-economic barriers in many South African school-community contexts, I compared how teachers in four schools implemented an asset-based intervention aimed at school-based psychosocial support. The working assumption was that teachers could act as protective resources in implementing the asset-based approach (following their participation in STAR1) to promote psychosocial support in their school-community contexts. The four schools were conveniently selected as information-rich cases to participate in the research study. The four cases comprised one informal settlement primary school in the Eastern Cape, two urban primary schools in Gauteng and one rural secondary school in Mpumalanga. Purposeful sampling was used to select ten participating teachers (n=40) in each school. Methodologically, the study followed a qualitative paradigm and a comparative case study design, implementing participatory rural appraisal (PRA) principles. The asset-based approach was used as theoretical framework. Multiple data gathering (focus groups, observation and intervention artefacts) and documentation procedures (verbatim transcripts, field notes, research journal and visual data) were implemented over a period of three years. Following constructivist grounded theory analysis, three main themes emerged: teachers using an asset-based approach for psychosocial support; teachers addressing barriers resourcefully; and teachers’ demonstrated asset-based competencies. The findings of the current study confirm that schools as part of unique systems are interrelated in terms of networks that mobilise assets, irrespective of the context. Teachers experience and prioritise a) socio-economic barriers (HIV/AIDS, financial constraints due to poverty and unemployment, and child abuse) and b) stressors of teaching (workload and related time constraints, attrition of group members, low levels of parent involvement, as well as context-specific factors). Teachers’ identification of barriers is determined by school contexts. Across school contexts teachers identified a) internal assets in their classrooms, the school context and in their communities together with b) community resources (physical resources, natural and environmental resources, community organisations and institutions). In psychosocial support, teachers mobilised identified assets and resources to ameliorate the impact of barriers. Teachers therefore promoted resilience by means of psychosocial support. The characteristics of school-based psychosocial support include identifying assets, prioritising barriers, mobilising assets to ameliorate the presence of barriers and establishing systemic networks and partnerships. When providing psychosocial support, teachers demonstrated asset-based competencies (positive identity formation, group effectiveness skills and management skills) signified as internal protective resources. By dynamically engaging in the challenges of their school-community contexts, teachers demonstrated self-determination (Deci&Ryan, 1985, 2002; Ryan&Deci, 2000, 2002) In the process, teachers displayed and actualised asset-based competencies, which in turn fulfilled the underlying psychological needs of competence, relatedness and autonomy. When they implemented the asset-based approach, it seemed to enhance teachers’ sense of coherence (Antonovsky, 1987) as they viewed the existence of barriers as being comprehensible, manageable and meaningful. Teachers were able to address barriers at an intrapersonal and interpersonal level as well as by deploying management skills. The three levels on which teachers addressed barriers correlate with their asset-based competencies. Their asset-based competency of positive identity formation was utilised to address barriers on an intrapersonal level; their group effectiveness skills addressed barriers on an interpersonal level and their management skills were deployed to address barriers on a level of administrating barriers efficiently. The study provides empirical evidence to broaden the current knowledge bases of the asset-based approach, resilience and school-based psychosocial support. The study contributes to the existing knowledge base of the asset-based approach by firstly highlighting social capital in school-community contexts as potential outcome of the implementation of the asset-based approach. Secondly, the study introduces asset-based competencies, as well as the dynamic relationship between these competencies and fundamental psychological needs (competence, relatedness and autonomy) as signified in self-determination theory (Deci&Ryan, 1985, 2002; Ryan&Deci, 2000, 2002). Lastly, the study conjectures the interconnectedness between the asset-based approach and a sense of coherence, in the sense that implementation of the asset-based approach could result in enhanced eustress (Simmons&Nelson, 2005) and sense of coherence (Antonovsky, 1987, 1993) when faced with and addressing barriers. Within the context of the existing knowledge base of resilience in schools and school-based psychosocial support, the findings suggest that resilience in schools could be promoted by teacher-driven psychosocial support initiatives. Firstly, the study signifies greater insight in teachers’ perspective on the potential assets and resources available in school-community contexts that could be mobilised for psychosocial support and the promotion of resilience. Secondly, the findings suggest empirical evidence that teachers (in a school context) can mobilise resources so that schools may serve as protective resources to promote resilience through school-based psychosocial support. Thirdly, the study contributes to new insight in possible barriers that teachers could encounter on a daily basis as well as the sort of psychosocial support that could be expected from similar school-based interventions. Lastly, the study provides insight into potential ways in which teachers can address barriers on an intrapersonal and interpersonal level and by deploying management skills. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Educational Psychology / unrestricted

South Africa is grappling with the AIDS pandemic that increases the numbers of vulnerable orphans, whose resilience is threatened. Little is known about the processes that enable resilience among these orphans. This qualitative study explored the roots of resilience among 23 AIDS-orphans. The Draw-and-write technique was used to collect data. The participants were asked to make drawings of what enabled them to cope resiliently and to write short narratives explaining their drawings. The drawings were grouped according to the dominant themes. A content analysis of the drawings and narratives was done. Eight themes relating to the roots of resilience among the participants emerged, namely, the participants had active support systems, participants received religious and/or spiritual support, participants had access to social services, books and school attendance changed the participants’ lives, having access to safe a home enhanced resilience, receiving inspiration, having a positive self-image and personal dreams, and physical activity was used to achieve catharsis. These findings have implications for theory and practice / Health Studies / M.A. (Public Health)

South Africa is grappling with the AIDS pandemic that increases the numbers of vulnerable orphans, whose resilience is threatened. Little is known about the processes that enable resilience among these orphans. This qualitative study explored the roots of resilience among 23 AIDS-orphans. The Draw-and-write technique was used to collect data. The participants were asked to make drawings of what enabled them to cope resiliently and to write short narratives explaining their drawings. The drawings were grouped according to the dominant themes. A content analysis of the drawings and narratives was done. Eight themes relating to the roots of resilience among the participants emerged, namely, the participants had active support systems, participants received religious and/or spiritual support, participants had access to social services, books and school attendance changed the participants’ lives, having access to safe a home enhanced resilience, receiving inspiration, having a positive self-image and personal dreams, and physical activity was used to achieve catharsis. These findings have implications for theory and practice / Health Studies / M.A. (Public Health)