Pillay Jace
Faculty of Education, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Front Psychol. 2023 Jul 25;14:1190297. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1190297. eCollection 2023.
Children live in a complex world surrounded by global concerns such as climate change, economic instability, threats of terrorism and war. However, in South Africa, one may note that children face several additional challenges including high unemployment rates in families, exposure to violence, living in conditions of poverty, exposure to HIV/AIDS, and high levels of orphanhood. Compounding these problems is the economic situation in the country where the government is unable to provide adequate support for children in various domains. Understanding the mechanisms through which children successfully adapt to their environments and transition into adulthood are important to understand. Resilience research seeks to understand these mechanisms and underlying processes that enable some individuals to recover from adversity against all odds. Therefore, there is an increased movement not only toward understanding resilience processes in children, which enable them to develop into fully functional and upstanding citizens of society despite the adversities they face, but also how resilience research can be translated into practice to be used by service professionals such as psychologists, school counselors, social workers, and teachers. Adopting a socioecological understanding of resilience, the author reviews literature on the psychological, social, and physical ecologies for child resilience globally. Special emphasis is placed on the ecologies of child resilience within the African context and South Africa in particular. A socioecological perspective positions child resilience within four important levels, namely individual, relationships, community, and society. The salient features of child resilience within a South African context are discussed within the four levels highlighting the implications for interventions to promote child resilience. The implications have global value because child resilience is a phenomenon that needs global attention.
儿童生活在一个复杂的世界中，周围环绕着诸如气候变化、经济不稳定、恐怖主义威胁和战争等全球性问题。然而，在南非，人们可能会注意到儿童面临着一些额外的挑战，包括家庭失业率高、遭受暴力、生活在贫困条件下、接触艾滋病毒/艾滋病以及高孤儿率。使这些问题更加复杂的是该国的经济状况，政府无法在各个领域为儿童提供足够的支持。了解儿童成功适应环境并过渡到成年期的机制非常重要。复原力研究旨在理解这些机制以及使一些人能够克服重重困难从逆境中恢复过来的潜在过程。因此，不仅越来越倾向于理解儿童的复原力过程，即尽管他们面临逆境，但仍能成长为社会中功能健全、正直的公民，而且还关注复原力研究如何转化为实践，供心理学家、学校辅导员、社会工作者和教师等服务专业人员使用。作者采用对复原力的社会生态理解，回顾了全球范围内关于儿童复原力的心理、社会和自然生态的文献。特别强调了非洲背景下，尤其是南非的儿童复原力生态。社会生态视角将儿童复原力置于四个重要层面，即个人、人际关系、社区和社会。在这四个层面内讨论了南非背景下儿童复原力的显著特征，突出了对促进儿童复原力干预措施的影响。这些影响具有全球价值，因为儿童复原力是一个需要全球关注的现象。
