This study is a critical analysis of the discourse on childhood resilience and the
politics of teaching resilience to "kids at risk" in inner-city schools. Resiliency research is
rooted in the early psychology studies of children's coping and competence. By the 1970s,
researchers were observing children who appeared invulnerable to traumatic events. These children
were later described as resilient, and resilience was defined as bouncing back from adversity. Today,
resilience has become an ideological code for social conformity and academic achievement. My
analysis problematizes "childhood resilience" and "teaching resilience" and examines two dangerous
shifts in the mainstream resiliency research over the past several decades.
In one shift, resilience slipped from an anomaly in the context of complex trauma to being claimed
as the social norm of the dominant society. In another shift, the context of resiliency research slipped
from traumatized to disadvantaged populations. Consequently, teaching resilience in inner-city
schools is a popular topic among professional child and youth advocates in BC. But these two shifts
manifest as teaching socioeconomically disadvantaged children to conform to the social norms of
the dominant society and as rationalizing social and educational programs that help children and
youth at risk overcome obstacles. Such programs do not work to challenge systemic inequalities.
I undertook a discourse analysis and an interpretive inquiry in identifying three resiliency discourses:
the first is a dominant expert discourse based on quantitative studies; the second is a subordinate
experiential discourse based on qualitative stories; and the third is a professional advocacy discourse
that includes expert and experiential knowledge. The expert discourse derives from psychometric
studies of resilient-identified children, and the experiential discourse emanates from the
psychotherapeutic narratives of resilient-identified adults. The advocacy discourse emerges from
educators, psychologists, and social workers who advocate on behalf of children and youth at risk.
The data include resiliency texts, focused interviews, and relevant fieldnotes. I developed criteria
for critiquing and recognizing resilience, explored potential intersections between the expert and
experiential discourses, and interpreted risk and resiliency themes in the advocacy discourse. In
challenging the dominant discourse, I argue that resilience is not a fixed set of traits that can be
reified and replicated. Moreover, I argue that complex trauma and trauma recovery are essential to
any construct of resilience and that resilience is pluralistic, contingent, and always in process.
My study recommends collaborative resiliency research that focuses on trauma and that values
experiential knowledge and attends to class and cultural diversity. It also recommends that the
professional advocacy community re-focus on risk and work toward developing social programs and
critical pedagogies that challenge structural oppression and systemic discrimination.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/10174 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Martineau, Sheila |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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