Education for resilience with Pakistani students impacted by violence

• In Event: The education sector in response, resilience and recovery during and after violent conflicts

Proposal

To understand how individual and community-level narratives shape behavior and attitudes it is important to understand story telling. Specifically, what role does narrative play in protest, resistance, and resilience? This paper argues that resilience begins with individuals making meaning of experiences in productive and functional ways. It assesses how under-researched students living in spaces of constant violence develop resilience. Scholarship delineate factors of resilience as biological, psychological, social, and environmental (Bell, 2011; Masten, 2014). Concepts like culture, religion, and spirituality interact with these elements to provide more tools to overcome hardships. However, this framework of resilience overlooks a foundational principle. People have “storied minds” - rich inner lives full of personal narratives, myths, and beliefs (Bell, 2011; Taylor, 2013). These inner lives are the first filter of all experiences. Experiences are ‘made sense of’ based on people’s inner worlds. This appraisal and reappraisal of experiences are the ultimate processes behind resilience. Yet researchers don't always understand what sorts of protective factors might help those in varied cultures and contexts. They often assume positive outcomes conceptualized in the West are demonstrative of resilience in other contexts. Quantitative research into the resilience of these children may miss resilient children who do not ascribe to Western models (Belsky & Pluess, 2009; Bermúdez Parsai et al., 2011; Kohrt & Mendenhall, 2015; Masten, 2018). Therefore, understanding perspectives is integral to research in resilience.
The fundamental aspect of resilience is overlooked when researchers focus on its more specific manifestations like religion. I conducted forty-two interviews and focus group discussions with Pakistani students impacted by violence, along with their caregivers, teachers, and peers, to center students' perspectives and put them into a social context. I spoke with them about navigating situations of perpetual conflict and violence against their identity and beliefs, how they react to those conflicts and challenges, and how they perceive their ability to achieve their goals. I make the case that experiences filter through personal meaning-making frameworks. This is the fundamental process of developing resilience. Pakistan presents an excellent case for exploring different resilience pathways and outcomes. With diverse ethnicities and religious backgrounds, the country has experienced wars and is home to extremist organizations (Afzal, 2018; Haqqani, 2005; Siddiqa, 2016). Karachi, its largest city with thirty million residents, is home to thousands of children facing various adversities, including social stigma, alienating curricula, poverty, and violence (Afzal, 2015; Lall, 2008; Fuchs & Fuchs, 2020; Shah et al., 2019; UNHCR, 2017). Despite these challenges, many children still thrive. My study demonstrates the importance of the ‘Storied Mind’. I show how local narratives around religious beliefs, the purposes and processes of education, mental health, and success interact, developing unique processes for resilience with contextually specific positive outcomes. As researchers study and work in various regions worldwide, understanding the process of resilience allows for nuanced approaches to policy and practice to develop better policies and interventions to help children.

Author

• Haider Fancy, New York University