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A Critical Discourse Analysis of Childhood Resilience and the Politics of Teaching Resilience to "Kids at Risk

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A Critical Discourse Analysis of Childhood Resilience and the Politics of Teaching Resilience to REWRITING RESILIENCE: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF CHILDHOOD RESILIENCE AND THE POLITICS OF TEACHING RESILIENCE TO "KIDS AT RISK by SHEILA MARTINEAU BA, The University of Toronto, 1993 "V A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Department of Educational Studies) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA April 1999 © Sheila Martineau, 1999 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of Educational Studies The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada Date: y 11 ABSTRACT HIS 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 Trooted 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. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ii TABLE OF CONTENTS iii LIST OF TABLES vii LIST OF BOXES viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix DEDICATION x 1. PROBLEMATIZING THE RESILIENCY DISCOURSE 1 Producing the "Resilient Child" 5 Individual Agency Within Structural Constraint 8 Resilience as an Ideological Code 11 Resilience as Rugged Individualism 12 Pathologizing Dependence 13 Targeting Disadvantage 14 Resilience as Self-Improvement 15 The Recovery Movement 15 Therapeutic Feminism 16 Children's Risk in Historical Context 18 Summary 29 2. THEORY AS METHOD: A MATTER OF INTERPRETATION 32 Feminist Standpoint Epistemology 34 Critical Discourse Analysis 38 Post-Structuralism .. 43 Co-Inherence of the Essence-Construct Binary 44 Structural Materialism 47 The Cultural Deficit Model 49 Narrative Analysis 49 Genre 52 Glossification 53 Glossing 54 Summary of Theoretical Framework 55 Critical Discourse Analysis 55 Three Resiliency Discourses 55 Interpretive Authority 57 Method and Methodology 57 Qualitative Research as Interpretive Inquiry 57 Data and Demographics 59 iv Data Collection 60 Data Analysis 60 Interpretation Matters 62 Interim Report 63 Demographics 64 Between Text and Talk 65 3. TEXT: EXPERT AND EXPERIENTIAL DISCOURSES ON RESILIENCE 66 Two Roads Diverged 69 The Quantitative Perspective: Resilience as Immediate 70 The Qualitative Perspective: Resilience as Mediated 73 Cautionary Comments 76 Conditional Criteria for Recognizing Resilience 78 Complex Trauma 80 Complex Post-Traumatic Stress 81 Resilience as Anomalous 82 A Slippery Slope 83 A Paradox 85 What Does Resiliency Mean and to Whom? 87 Invulnerability to Adversity? 87 Bouncing Back from Adversity? 91 Surviving, Thriving, or Striving? 92 From Resiliency Relativism to Resiliency Pluralism 96 Relativism: Informal Meanings 96 Pluralism: Formal Meanings 98 The Pioneering Studies as Problematic 100 Challenging Assumptions and Stereotypes 103 Dangerous Adaptivity vs. Adaptive Distancing 104 Gender: Externalizing and Internalizing Behaviours 107 Class and Culture: Mis/measuring Academic Achievement Ill Surveillance: Achievement as Assimilation 114 Social Competence as Social Conformity 115 Social Competence 116 Upward Mobility 118 Social Conformity 119 Professionalized Parenting 120 Little Adults: Children Without Childhoods 121 Little Soldiers: Exploitative Resilience 121 Little Mothers: Performative Resilience 123 Summary 126 4. INTERTEXTUALITIES: BETWEEN DIVERGENT DISCOURSES 128 Success Despite Distress: Quantified Resiliency Traits 129 Model of Inputs and Outputs 129 Inner Locus of Control 130 Common Ground: Self-Understanding 132 Success Through Process: Qualified Resiliency Traits 133 Time and Turning Points 133 V Overcoming a Cruel Past 134 Tales of Triumph 135 Co-Inherence of Binary Oppositions 138 Divergence: Research Paradigms 141 In/Coherence: Research Perspectives 142 Intersections: Conditions and Behaviours 144 Convergence: Traits and Characteristics 145 Taking the Road Less Travelled By 147 Summary 148 At the Crossroads: From Text to Talk 151 5. TALK: ADVOCACY DISCOURSES ON RISK AND RESILIENCE 154 Conservative Constraints and Progressive Politics 155 From Text to Talk: Resilience is "In the Air" 158 Professional Perspectives: Resilience as Expert Knowledge 159 Personal Perceptions: Resilience as Experiential Knowledge 162 Childhoods Without Risk 165 Childhoods With Risk 167 Talk About Children's Risk: Across Classes and Cultures 171 Lack: At-Risk and In-Distress 172 Panic: Hopelessness and Meaninglessness 175 Talk About Childhood Resilience: Envisioning One's Future 178 Talk About Teaching Resilience: Experiencing One's Success 181 Whose Needs? Who Benefits? 183 Kids at Risk: Threats to Society? 185 Resiliency Programming as Risk Programming 187 Summary 189 6. REWRITING RESILIENCE: POLITICS AND PROBLEMATICS 192 Slippery Slopes in Resiliency Research 193 Expert, Experiential, and Advocacy Discourses 195 Childhood Resilience: The Problematics of Reification 196 In/Vulnerability to Trauma 197 Commonsense Categories 198 Teaching Resilience: The Politics of Replication 200 Reconceptualizing Teaching and Schooling 201 Rearticulating Risk Programming 204 The Road Ahead: Dead-Ends and Critical Paths 207 From Risk Rhetoric to Panacean Promise 207 From Rhetoric to Strategic Redirections 213 REFERENCE LIST 219 APPENDIXES 236 Appendix A: Data Collection 236 Pilot Study 236 Resiliency Literature 236 Focused Interviews 237 Purposive Sampling 237 Contact and Consent 238 vi Researcher and Volunteer Bias 238 The Interview Process 239 Pseudonyms and No Names 240 Participant-Observation 240 Psychology Seminars 240 Advocacy Conferences 241 Appendix B: Contact and Consent Letters 242 Initial Contact Letter 242 Interview Consent Letter 243 Appendix C: Interview Schedule 244 Appendix D: Data Analysis I 246 Relational Database System 246 Library Master — Partial List of Subject Headings 247 Appendix E: Data Analysis II 248 Code and Retrieval System 248 Coding Strategies 248 Systematic Analyses 249 ATLAS/ti — Partial List of Codewords 250 Appendix F: Demographics 251 Focused Interview Participants 251 Age and Gender 251 Class and Culture 251 Marital and Family Status 251 Educational Background 252 Professional Categories 252 Advocates' Pseudonyms 254 Pilot Interview Participants 254 Psychology Seminar Participants 255 vii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Data Collection Sources 60 Table 2: Conditional
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