Exploring Adolescent Resilience during COVID-19 in a South African Township Context

College of Education at Georgia Southern University. Digital Commons Office, Zach S. Henderson Library, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA 30458. e-mail: [email protected]; Web site: https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/nyar/

Y

25

COVID-19; Pandemics; Adolescents; Resilience (Psychology); Grade 8; Grade 9; Grade 10; Coping; Foreign Countries; Resources; School Closing

2766-9300

COVID-19 has permeated news since December 2019 and has impacted all areas of life. Despite widespread coverage of COVID-related risks, there is limited understanding of adolescent resilience in Global South contexts (e.g., Africa) and against the backdrop of COVID-19. We, therefore, conducted a qualitative secondary analysis of 79 documents (i.e., drawings and written explanations) generated by school-attending adolescents in grades eight to ten in Zamdela, South Africa, during 2020 lockdown. Using a multisystemic resilience approach, we explored what these documents revealed as resilience enabling for adolescents in a township context during COVID-19. The thematic findings highlight the importance of personal resources, complemented by relational resources and very occasionally, resources in young people's physical ecology. These findings reinforce that resilience is more than a set of personal strengths and reminds us that individual capacity for resilience is pertinent when contextual and temporal dynamics such as resource constraints and lockdown conditions prevail.

As Provided

2024

EJ1415735