New Research Adds to Knowledge on Resiliency
By Bonnie Benard

While I hope to soon update my document Fostering Resiliency in Kids: Protective Factors in the Family, School, and Community, I'm going to take this opportunity to briefly mention a number of recent books that I highly recommend to those of you interested in this topic. While several of the books focus directly on resiliency and protective factors, many of the authors probably have not heard of these concepts. Yet what they are writing about is just this, the importance of environments that encourage the healthy development of all people through caring and support, high and positive expectations, and opportunities for active participation and contribution. So, following my resiliency framework, we'll look first at the books focused on the personality attributes of resiliency and then at those that discuss the family and school environments that foster these attributes through the creation of caring environments with high expectations and opportunities for active participation. A discussion of recent books on the community and resiliency will be the focus of the next "Corner on Research." The foundation of resiliency research is the seminal work of Emmy Werner and her colleague Ruth Smith. Last year, they published their most recent book summarizing their ongoing longitudinal study of all individuals born on the Hawaiian island of Kauai in 1955. While their earlier book, Vulnerable But Invincible (1982), had documented that one out of every three high-risk children developed into "a competent, confident, and caring young adult by age 18," their new book, Overcoming the Odds: High Risk Children from Birth to Adulthood (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), further finds that of the remaining two out of three high-risk children who did become high-risk adolescents, two-thirds became successful adults by age 32!

Several of the conclusions drawn by Werner and Smith have profound implications for our work with youth, families, schools, and communities.

· First, they clearly establish the self-righting tendencies that move children toward normal adult development under all but the most persistent adverse circumstances.

· Second, the life stories of the resilient youngsters now grown into adulthood teach us that competence, confidence, and caring can flourish, even under adverse circumstances, if children encounter persons who provide them with the secure basis for the development of trust, autonomy, and initiative. 

· Third, their research, along with other prospective longitudinal research, finds that these positive, buffering relationships make a more profound impact on the life course of children who grow up under adverse conditions than do specific risk factors or stressful life events. 

· Fourth, it is never too late to change a life trajectory from despair to one of hope and success. And last, a focus on these protective factors gives all of us who work with youth and adults a motivating sense of optimism that through our positive relationships, youth and adults can

recover their inner strengths. If you read no other book on resiliency, I encourage you to read this passionate account of the most solid research done in the field.

Self-Righting Tendencies

A just-published book by Steve and Sybil Wolin, The Resilient Self: How Survivors of Troubled Families Rise Above Adversity New York: Villard Books, 1993) is a compelling and beautiful book that documents the "self-righting tendencies" and attributes of individuals who have learned to love well, work well, play well, and expect well in spite of growing up in very troubled families. Drawing on their combined therapeutic experiences in working with these "survivors," as well as on prior research, the Wolins make the point "that by learning about resilience, you can become resilient" that you can "master your painful memories rather than tripping the Victim's Trap.'" Instead of compulsively rehashing the damage you have suffered, the Wolins write, you can accept the fact that your troubled family has left its mark and give up the futile wish that your scars can ever disappear completely. You can get revenge by living well instead of squandering your energy by blaming and fault-finding. And finally, they say, you can break the cycle of your family's troubles and put the past in its place.

The Wolins identify seven traits of resilience that develop when children actively learn to watch out for themselves, identify allies outside the family, and engage in rewarding activities: insight, independence, relationships, initiative, creativity, humor, and morality. Targeting primarily adult survivors and therapists who work with them, the book challenges helping professionals to move beyond the old paradigm, the damage model, to the challenge model in which the incredible strengths of these survivors are acknowledged. Although the authors don't discuss implications for prevention in other settings, it is clear that any adult working with youth or other adults can, by accepting the challenge paradigm, convey the above messages to kids in troubled families and help them see their internal strengths and innate common sense.

Another "gem" that focuses on healing from a painful family past and identifies the strengths that facilitate survival and healing is Wayne Muller's Legacy of the Heart: The Spiritual Advantages of a Painful Childhood (New York: Simon and Schuster,1992). As a therapist and minister, Muller "noted that adults who were hurt as children inevitably exhibit a peculiar strength, a profound inner wisdom, and a remarkable creativity and insight." Muller also promotes the challenge model (i.e., resiliency paradigm) and asks all who were hurt as children or those who work with adult survivors to see that "You are not broken; childhood suffering is not a mortal wound, and it did not irrevocably shape your destiny. You need not remove, destroy, or tear anything out of yourself in order to build something new. Your challenge is not to keep trying to repair what was damaged; your practice instead is to reawaken what is already wise, strong, and whole within you, to cultivate those qualities of heart and spirit that are available to you in this very moment."

In this book, Muller presents 12 childhood "wounds" and then, through a discussion based on his professional experiences and spiritual teachings from around the world, he illustrates how these pains also provide opportunities for growth. For example, from pain we learn forgiveness; from fear, faith; from disappointment, non-attachment; from isolation, intimacy; from obligation, loving kindness. While Muller, like the Wolins, is addressing therapists and adult survivors, his empowering message is one that children living in stressful families also need to hear. While it's never too late to change a life trajectory, it's also never too early!

In the arena of family, Andrew Billingsley asks us to move beyond the damage model in how we perceive African American families. In his recent book, Climbing Jacob's Ladder: The Enduring Legacy of African American Families, he not only provides data and information that counters stereotypes and misconceptions about African American family life, he illustrates with compelling stories about  real individuals the incredible resilience that has sustained this institution "against all odds."

Just as the above two books discussed the importance of adult survivors of troubled families seeing their internal strengths, Billingsley argues that while "it would be naive in the extreme to ignore the many pressures bearing down and compromising the ability of many (African American families) to meet the basic needs of their members, there is another side to the story. And we argue in this book that this other side" enduring, positive, and powerful "is more important because it is more generative. It can continually renew and sustain this vital sector of American society in the years ahead." Billingsley is making the case, as did Werner and Smith, that a focus on strengths provides people with a realistic sense of optimism that empowers them not only as individuals but, as Billingsley so eloquently reiterates throughout this book, also enables them to work together as a collective community for social justice. Providing a segue from the family as protective buffer to the school is James Garbarino and colleagues' book, Children in Danger: Coping with the Consequences of Community Violence (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1992). Servingas a companion piece to their 1991 book, No Place to Be a Child: Growing Up in a War Zone, which explored the experience of children in war zones around the world "in Mozambique, Nicaragua, Cambodia, the Middle East, and inner-city Chicago" this book addresses what professionals and policy makers can do to provide refuge and safety to nurture the resiliency of the increasing number of children who are growing up in inner-city war zones in the United States. After documenting, through interviews with children and care givers and through others' research, the realities of life in these war zones and the developmental tolls they take on children, the authors discuss how we can best support these children. Coming as no surprise is their conclusion that their research and that of others has found that "most children are able to cope with dangerous environments and maintain reservoirs of resilience as long as parents are not pushed beyond their stress absorption capacity. Once that point is exceeded, however, the development of young children deteriorates rapidly and markedly. Reservoirs of resilience become depleted, day-to-day care breaks down, and rates of exploitation and victimization increase."

Unfortunately, as we've seen in the Wolin and Muller books, parents do succumb to the stresses of poverty and unemployment and are not always there to provide this powerful buffer. In the absence of a sense of predictable care giving and structure in the home, the school becomes a vital refuge and a pivotal point in turning a life of despair into one of hope. "We observe that, despite the overwhelming pressures in the environment, 75 percent to 80 percent of the children can use school activities as a support for healthy adjustment and achievement when schools are sensitive to them and their burdens," the authors write. Beginning with early childhood programs, school-based interventions must "stress the importance of close, mutually reinforcing, and growth-enhancing relationships between adults and children." Furthermore, quoting an earlier researcher, "The most important single factor in establishing sound mental health is the relationship that is built up between the teacher and his or her pupils. This is as true in the kindergarten as it is in the high school."

Centers of Care

And just how might we best facilitate the development of these positive  relationships in the school? Nel Noddings gives us a clear road map in her recent book, The Challenge to Care in Schools: An Alternative Approach to Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1992). Noddings creates a vision of a school system built on the central mission of caring "which from her perspective incorporates the other protective factors of high expectations and opportunities for participation" and organized around "centers of care: care for self, for intimate others, for associates and acquaintances, for distant others, for non-human animals, for plants and the physical environment, for the human-made world of objects and instruments, and for ideas." Her approach also is "an argument, first, against an ideology of control that forces all students to study a particular, narrowly prescribed curriculum devoid of content they might really care about. Second, it is an argument in favor of greater respect for a wonderful range of human capacities now largely ignored in schools. Third, it is an argument against the persistent under valuing of skills, attitudes, and capacities traditionally associated with women" (i.e., caring!).

As she so articulately acknowledges, her integrated way of looking at curriculum and instruction is neither new (being well described by John Dewey long ago) nor "mushy." She writes: "When we care, we accept the responsibility to work continuously on our own competence so that the recipient of our care" person, animal, object, or idea" is enhanced. There is nothing mushy about caring. It is the strong, resilient backbone of human life." If I were queen of the world, The Challenge to Care would be required reading for anyone involved with children but especially parents, educators, and policymakers. Validating Noddings' agenda is a recent study of schooling which is rather unique, ironically, in that the researchers, operating on the assumption that what matters most about education happens inside the classroom, chose as their primary experts about the classroom those who actually work there "students, teachers, administrators and staff, and parents. Voices from the Inside: A Report on Schooling form Inside the Classroom Institute for Education in Transformation at the Claremont Graduate School, November 1992) found, as did Noddings, that the policy remedies offered by most education reformers seldom relate to the problems identified by students, teachers, and parents. Their data suggested that "the heretofore identified problems of schooling (lowered achievement, high dropout rates and problems in the teaching profession) are rather consequences of much deeper and more fundamental problems." The participants identified seven major issues from inside the classroom, including such issues as unsatisfactory relationships between and among students and staff members, differences of race and class, and deep concerns about school safety, all of which are reflected in a "pervasive sense of despair" and summed up in the statement, "This place hurts my spirit."

As you read the report (which I hope you will!), over and over again the issue of caring is raised as the Number One concern of students, teachers, and parents caring between the teacher and student, between teachers, and among staff members. A fascinating finding was that the researchers realized over the course of the year that the participatory research processes we are developing are critical to school and classroom transformation. Operating in the participatory, empowering resiliency paradigm by using a group process that promoted caring relationships, acknowledged everyone's expertise, and elicited everyone's participation, they were actually beginning the process of school and classroom change!

The critical role that the principal of the school plays in creating this participatory, resiliency- promoting structure in a school is the focus of Thomas Sergiovanni's  book, Moral Leadership: Getting to the Heart of School Improvement San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1992). This book neatly complements the Noddings book, for Sergiovanni is attempting to reframe the role of leadership in a school from an old paradigm focus on management and control and the view that a school is a formal organization to a new paradigm of empowerment through caring, acknowledging the expertise of teachers and students, and facilitating their active participation in the school. A school, he says, is a community with a shared sense of values and purpose. He describes a "virtuous school" as one founded on the beliefs that a school must be a community, that this community includes parents and community as well as teachers and students, that every student can learn, that caring for the whole child is the key to academic success, and that mutual respect and positive expectations are the operating dynamics. This "virtuous school," in fact, is very similar to Noddings' "caring school" (and the "resilient school!"). Sergiovanni expresses his optimism that schools can be transformed in this way in a recent interview. "I think the door is open now to a kind of revolution," he said. "We're beginning to recognize that schools are special places where people care about teaching and learning. They're not like most organizations; you can't apply organizational principles to places characterized by sandboxes, books, and children. Schools are more like families and small communities where, if you can develop the right substitutes, you can throw traditional leadership away. There's no need for it ever again."

A Vicious Circle

I'm going to close this very selective review there are so many exciting new books, not to mention journal selections, that I have not mentioned which relate to the resiliency paradigm with a wonderful little resource focused on that key player in creating a school climate of caring, high expectations, and participation: the teacher. Pat Munson's Winning Teacher/Teaching Winners (Santa Cruz: ETR Associates, 1991) addresses a seldom-acknowledged key to effective change in the schools: how teachers feel about themselves. "When teachers feel inadequate, unappreciated and isolated, they become more punitive in their actions, display less patience in their instruction, demonstrate less compassion for students, and engage in less effective problem solving," she writes. "The results are reflected in students who see school as an uncaring institution, who lack motivation, whose little point in continuing in school and who engage in deviant behavior to compensate for their own feelings of inadequacy." Clearly, what we have here is "a vicious cycle" that needs to be addressed by systemic changes that give teachers opportunities to form supportive, caring relationships with their colleagues with whom they collaborate in making decisions and planning their activities. However, teachers "or any adults working with youth" do have the personal responsibility to examine their beliefs and values and know who they are, no matter what the structure of their work environment. As Munson states, "The front of a classroom is a powerful place to be. The responsibility is awesome. You cannot teach and empower children to be successful if you do not hold yourself to be so. Everything you are and all that you believe is transmitted to your students at some level. We owe it to our students and ourselves to be sure that who we are and what we believe is really our truth."

Whether we like it or not, the relationships we have with youth possess the potential to become what Emmy Werner refers to as a "turning point" in another person's life. In some ways, this last book leads us back to the theme of the books we began our review with the need to acknowledge our own strengths and sources of resilience in coping with what are often uncaring, troubled institutions that are not supportive of people and relationships; to move beyond a view of ourselves as "victims" of these institutions; and to claim the right to feel what the Wolins call "Survivor's Pride!"

[From Western Center News, June 1993, Vol.6,No.3]