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Ethnocultural factors, resilience, and school engagement

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Ethnocultural factors, resilience, and school engagement

Michael Ungar and Linda Liebenberg
School Psychology International 2013 34: 514
DOI: 10.1177/0143034312472761

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Article
School Psychology International
34(5) 514–526
Ethnocultural factors, ! The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/0143034312472761

engagement spi.sagepub.com

Michael Ungar
Resilience Research Centre, Dalhousie University, Canada

Linda Liebenberg
Resilience Research Centre, Dalhousie University, Canada

Abstract
In this article we examine how cultural and community factors interact with individual
level factors to predict school participation. Participants were 497 Atlantic Canadian
youth purposefully selected because of their concurrent use of more than one govern-
ment service or community program at the time they were interviewed. Results
revealed that contextual factors associated with resilience (e.g. cultural adherence
and involvement in one’s community) affect school engagement more than individual
or relational factors among this population. Furthermore, these contextual resilience
factors showed a pattern of differential impact, with the greatest influence occurring in
the lives of visible minority youth. Findings suggest that improvements in school engage-
ment are likely to result from school-based efforts to enhance children’s experience of
their culture and involvement in community activities. Sampling youth outside regular
classroom settings and including meso- and exo-systemic factors in studies of school
engagement may help to identify protective processes not previously discussed in the
literature.

Keywords
Canada, Canadian Atlantic youth, culture, delinquency, exo-systemic factors, resilience,
school engagement, service use

School engagement is commonly defined as a multidimensional construct that

accounts for students’ behavior at school, emotional attachment to their school,
and cognitions related to the value they place on education (Fredricks, Blumenfeld,
& Paris, 2004). It has also been shown to be associated with resilience—with higher

Corresponding author:
Michael Ungar, Dalhousie University, 6420 Coburg Road, PO Box 15000, Halifax B3H 4R2, Canada.
Email: Michael.Ungar@dal.ca
Ungar and Liebenberg 515

school engagement predictive of lower rates of substance use, less delinquency, and
a more secure attachment to formal learning, though these associations may vary
slightly depending upon the socio-economic status of students (Luthar & Ansary,
2005). Typically, factors related to school engagement are studied at the level of the
student, the school, or more recently, meso-systemic processes that occur when
students and teachers, students and peers, or teachers and parents interact.
Ethnocultural factors are frequently referred to in these studies, though usually
as individual-level confounding variables that influences patterns of school engage-
ment. For example, when examining the influence of racial bullying by different
ethnoracial groups of children in Canada, Larochette and her colleagues
(Larochette, Murphy, & Craig, 2010) found that racial bullying and racial victim-
ization that can contribute to students disengaging from school are best predicted
by individual-level factors such as the student’s race, but not school-level factors
like school climate. Findings such as these suggest that ethnoracial identity is a
personal, immutable quality located within the child. Understood this way, it is
difficult to think of ethnic, racial, or cultural factors associated with ethnoracial
identity as amenable to change by educators.
A second group of researchers have demonstrated sensitivity to ethnoracial
diversity by analysing differences between ethnoracial groups when reporting find-
ings. Again, the implication is that these are fixed traits that children come to
school with that the school has no control over if it wants to address problems
of engagement. Even though visible minorities, notably African Americans, have
been shown to have less behavioral engagement and higher emotional engagement
(a sense of belonging) than their White peers (Voelkl, 1997), the factors that are
studied seldom extend beyond the school itself to community factors that create the
social conditions that put some ethnoracial minorities at greater risk for early
school leaving, or being less invested in pursuing educational goals.
In an attempt to address this critical gap in research, we employ a social eco-
logical perspective on resilience (Bottrell, 2009; Obrist, Pfeiffer, & Henley, 2010;
Ungar, 2011) to look broadly at factors related to an ethnoracial group’s engage-
ment at school. A social ecological perspective of resilience decenters attention
from the individual, focusing rather on the proximal processes that make resilience
more likely to occur. With regard to ethnicity and race, these factors include
whether youth are treated fairly in their communities, feel good about their
family traditions, are proud of their ethnicity and national identity, and are pro-
vided opportunities in their community to show others they are responsible
(Panter-Brick & Eggerman, 2012; Theron et al., 2011). Studies of children’s
mental health concerns, such as the study by Chandler, Lalonde, and Sokol
(2003) of youth suicide in First Nations (Canadian Indigenous peoples) commu-
nities, have shown that ethnicity and race are not risk factors when youth are
provided with a community context that promotes cultural adherence through
social events, the creation of physical spaces in the community to celebrate the
child’s culture, and political rights. Related work by Burack et al. (2013) has shown
that school performance among Canadian First Nations youth is also influenced
516 School Psychology International 34(5)

positively by the peer acceptance and self-reported attachment to peers, with both
experiences associated with academic achievement.

The social ecology of resilience

Recent advances to the theory of resilience, most notably as a social ecological
construct (Ungar, 2012), are contributing to a definition of resilience that directs
attention to the processes whereby individuals who face significant challenges
interact with their environments to optimize personal success (Ungar &
Liebenberg, 2011). As defined by Ungar (2011), resilience occurs when there is
significant exposure to adversity, such that protective processes interact with the
stressors a child experiences (like racism). In these contexts of stress, resilience is
the capacity of children to navigate to the psychological, social, cultural, and
physical resources that help them nurture and sustain well-being, and their capa-
city on their own and with others to negotiate for what they need to be provided
in culturally meaningful ways.
There is a growing appreciation for the construct of resilience among school
researchers who distinguish between ubiquitous strengths, assets (Edwards,
Mumford, & Serra-Roldan, 2007) or buoyancy (Martin & Marsh, 2008) that char-
acterize the capacity of all students to do well at school when facing normative
amounts of stress. Appreciation is also rendered for the mechanisms associated
with resilience when stress levels are above normal but children cope in ways that
are better than expected. Not only, then, do studies of resilience distinguish pro-
motive processes that are good for all children from the protective processes that
are relevant to children under the greatest stress, but they also recognize that the
influence these processes exert over children will differ by the level of exposure to
risk the child experiences (Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker, 2000). For example, after
Hurricane Katrina in the USA, the re-establishment of schools for displaced chil-
dren fostered a great many mental health benefits that are not typical of children’s
everyday experience of attending school when their environment is stable (Heath,
Nickerson, Annandale, Kemple, & Dean, 2009). This promotive health enhancing
function of school attendance exerts a differential impact on children’s well-being
the more children are at-risk.
Informed by the social ecological theory of resilience, we will review research on
school engagement that has included examination of ethnoracial factors beyond
the school itself that protect children from disengaging from educational
institutions.

Contextual factors and school engagement

Among both privileged and non-privileged populations, characteristics like self-
esteem, locus of control, and level of participation in school activities are predictive
of higher engagement (Finn & Rock, 1997). Self-reports of disengagement, how-
ever, are reportedly greatest among students from homes with higher
Ungar and Liebenberg 517

socioeconomic status (SES) and those who are visibly the dominant cultural group
(typically those of Anglo-European ethnoracial backgrounds). Lower SES and
ethnoracial minority students may report higher rates of school engagement but
lower grade point averages (GPA). This pattern is explained by Shernoff and
Schmidt (2008) who conducted a five-year longitudinal study of 586 youth from
13 ethnically diverse middle schools and found that while student engagement is a
significant predictor of GPA among White students after controlling for SES, GPA
and engagement are inversely related for Black students. This paradox can be
explained if engagement is understood as a protective factor for students who
are under stress (90% of the Black students in the Shernoff and Schmidt study
were from lower SES homes). For students who do not experience economic hard-
ship and racial marginalization, school engagement appears to be lower, although
these results are inconsistent.
Regardless of which pattern is supported by the research, studies such as these
indicate that SES, community safety, racism, and other contextually relevant bar-
riers to adolescents getting an education do exert an influence on school engage-
ment, though not necessarily GPA, which is a measure of an individual trait rather
than relational process (Annunziata, Hogue, Faw, & Liddle, 2006). Relatively few
studies, however, have examined the relationship between social and economic
factors and school engagement (American Psychological Association Task Force
on Resilience and Strength in Black Children and Adolescents, 2008; Dotterer,
McHale, & Crouter, 2009). Furthermore, most of the studies that have been pub-
lished examine school engagement among youth who are present in the school
system, avoiding the issue of whether the youth who have already disengaged
from formal education did so because of unnamed factors.
The most common way exo-systemic factors like racism and its impact on cultural
identification are investigated in studies of school engagement is to preselect the
student sample by ethnoracial population, most commonly African American and
Latino/Latina youth in the United States who are assumed to be at greater risk than
their White or Asian American peers (this assumption has been challenged by those
who question whether class is a more important factor than race in determining risk)
(Shernoff & Schmidt, 2008). Aspects of racial discrimination, poverty, and family
dysfunction are then assessed in order to understand their impact on engagement.
The tacit assumptions of this methodology (which can reinforce stereotypes of urban
racial minorities as disengaged) are: (a) that factors like racial identity, prejudice,
and urban poverty are less relevant to students who are of Anglo-European back-
grounds (typically defined as White); and (b) within-population differences can be
ignored as homogeneity is assumed among young people from very diverse ethno-
racial heritages who share vague phenotypical features.
Dotterer et al. (2009) tried to avoid these problems in their investigation of the
effect of racial discrimination, racial socialization, and ethnic identity on student
relationships, school bonding, and school self-esteem (pride in one’s school accom-
plishments). Unexpectedly, 12th grade African-American students living in two-
parent families reported relatively low levels of racial discrimination at school and
518 School Psychology International 34(5)

relatively good school bonding, ethnic identification, and school self-esteem.

Furthermore, racial socialization and ethnic identity positively influenced school
engagement and mitigated the impact of racial discrimination when it did occur.
Again, while none of these factors affected GPA, higher level of engagement at
school was a protective factor for experiences of discrimination related to racial
marginalization and lower SES. It is this complex association between ethnoracial
background, community factors that support resilience, and school engagement,
which is the focus for the present analysis of data drawn from a larger study of
risk, resilience, and service use patterns (see Ungar, Liebenberg, Armstrong,
Dudding, & van de Vijver, in press).

Purpose
Given that students from ethnoracial minorities show different engagement pat-
terns than majority culture students, we conducted an analysis to investigate the
relationship between community and cultural factors related to resilience and their
influence on school engagement for at-risk young people. We hypothesized that
contextual factors beyond the school that promoted cultural adherence (a positive
sense of one’s ethnoracial background) would be more influential on school
engagement than individual or relational factors involving caregivers, peers, or
teachers. We also hypothesized that the effect of cultural adherence and civic
responsibility would be strongest (i.e. show a differential impact) for ethnoracial
minorities who face significant structural adversity because of their minority status.

Method
Participants and sampling
Participants were sampled from urban and rural communities in Atlantic Canada
between January 2008 and December 2009. Uniquely, this study sampled vulner-
able youth engaged with multiple services, rather than mainstream school-based
youth. The research team worked with government departments responsible for
child welfare services, mental health services, youth criminal justice, community
services for homeless youth and educational support services (resource teachers,
guidance counsellors, school psychologists, alternative education settings, etc.).
Frontline staff identified youth for referral to the study, who were active on their
caseloads and were known to have received services from at least two different
service providers in the last six months. Permission to share contact details with the
research team was obtained by staff from the youth and a legal guardian (when
required) prior to nomination. Given the confidential nature of the nomination
process, we have no way of knowing what proportion of youth agreed to partici-
pate, though agency staff reported a very high rate of interest in the study. To our
knowledge, all youth who agreed to have their contact details shared went on to
complete the questionnaire.
Ungar and Liebenberg 519

The diversity of the services and communities in which the study took place
meant consent requirements differed substantially across service using populations.
At least 15 separate ethics applications were required to comply with each service’s
consent process, including those that protect ethnoracial minorities (e.g. ethics
boards in Aboriginal communities) and clients under provincial mandates (such
as those using juvenile justice and child welfare services).
Results from 497 youth are reported here; of these youth, 281 (57%) were boys
with a mean age of 17 years (SD ¼ 1.87). Only 198 participants (40%) lived with
both their parents; 80 (16%) lived with a single parent and 219 (44%) had an
alternative living arrangement. Three hundred and sixty-eight (75%) were attend-
ing school at least part-time when they participated in the study though they may
have been sampled from any of the services which nominated youth, not just
educational settings. Fifty-five (12%) had graduated. Two hundred and twenty
participants (45%) self-identified as visible minorities (i.e. non-White).

Measures
Each of the study variables were assessed using established measures or measures
adapted for the purposes of this study and piloted with 40 youth prior to the full
study being initiated. Predictor variables included three risk variables, three resi-
lience variables, and a service use variable. School engagement was the outcome
variable.

Predictor variables. Risk refers to both community dangers and personal character-
istics of youth that reflect exposure to acute or chronic adversity. Measures
included the Delinquency sub-scale of the 4HSQ ( ¼ 0.73, rated on a five-point
scale from 1 ¼ Never to 5 ¼ 5 or more times), from the 4-H study of Positive Youth
Development (Phelps et al., 2007; Theokas & Lerner, 2006). Five items assess youth
engagement in theft, property damage, violence, and interaction with the police
during the past year. The alpha coefficient in the present study was 0.84. The 12-
item version of the Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D-
12-NLSCY) (Poulin, Hand, & Boudreau, 2005), a measure of depression risk, is
rated on a four-point scale from 0 ¼ Rarely or none of the time to 3 ¼ All of the
time ( ¼ 0.85). Items ask how often during the past week the youth has experi-
enced symptoms indicative of depression. The scale in this study had an alpha
coefficient of 0.83. Finally, a composite score assessing sense of community
danger was established using items from the Boston Youth Survey (BYS; Boston
Centers for Youth and Families, 2001). Six items are measured on a four-point
scale, assessing levels of neighborhood trust, interaction, monitoring and safety.
The alpha coefficient was 0.69.
Resilience was measured using the three sub-scales of the 28-item Child and
Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM-28; Liebenberg, Ungar, & Van de Vijver,
2012; Ungar & Liebenberg, 2011). Items are rated on a five-point scale from
1 ¼ does not describe me at all to 5 ¼ describes me a lot and assess. The three
520 School Psychology International 34(5)

subscales are: Individual resources (11 items;  ¼ 0.79) such as personal skills, social
skills, and peer support; physical and psychological caregiving by primary caregivers
(7 items;  ¼ 0.83); and contextual resources that facilitate sense of belonging
(10 items;  ¼ 0.81) including spiritual, cultural and educational resources. For the
purposes of this analysis, the items related to school engagement were omitted to
avoid redundancy. The alpha coefficient with these items removed was 0.78.
Service use comprised a composite self-report score assessing service use history
(i.e. has the youth ever used a service) and frequency of contact with mental health,
child welfare, youth corrections (or contact with the police), and educational sup-
ports beyond regular classroom programming. Higher scores indicate greater invol-
vement with service providers.

Outcome variable. Degree of school engagement was assessed using the two education
items of the CYRM-28 and three items from the Canadian National Longitudinal
Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY), a survey regarding factors influencing
children’s social, emotional and behavioral development. Collectively, the five
items measured behaviors related to school engagement, attitudes towards education
and emotional attachment to school. The alpha coefficient for these items was 0.67.

Procedures
Following signed consent, questionnaires were administered individually and in
private with youth. All questions were read out loud regardless of the young
person’s ability to read. Researchers met with the youth at school, home, or a
community setting such as a recreation center or library. Administration of the
questionnaire took approximately 45 minutes. Youth were compensated for their
time and any expenses incurred participating in the study.

Data analysis
Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to examine differences in the dependent
variable, school engagement, by the ten independent variables. Interactions between
the independent variables (resilience, service use, and risk) and their subsequent
impact on school engagement were then examined using hierarchical multiple regres-
sion analysis. As we had no assumptions regarding the relative importance of the
predictor variables in relation to the outcome variable, forced entry analysis was
used (Studenmund & Cassidy, 1987). Resources such as resilience and service sup-
ports were entered into the model before risk as the focus of the study was on factors
that contribute to positive growth and development (resilience).

Results
With regard to our first hypothesis, we were particularly concerned with the rela-
tionship between contextual factors that would reasonably be associated with
Ungar and Liebenberg 521

experiences of marginalization among ethnoracial minorities and their relationship

to students’ behaviors, emotions, and cognitions related to school engagement.
ANOVA results demonstrated differences in levels of school engagement for all
independent variables except the use of school-based services, F(34, 459) ¼ 1.381,
p ¼ 0.078, and child welfare, F(34, 458) ¼ 1.327, p ¼ 0.107. Both measures were
removed from the regression analysis. Results from the hierarchical regression
analysis explained 33% of the variability in school engagement. Interestingly, in
this full analysis, the CYRM Context sub-scale (measuring aspects of a child’s
cultural adherence and community connections) showed a significant relationship
with school engagement, t(490) ¼ 4.840, p ¼ 0.000, while individual characteristics
and relationships with caregivers were statistically insignificant. With regards to
service use, only involvement with youth criminal justice was significant,
t(490) ¼ 2.139, p ¼ 0.033. In terms of risk, both engagement in delinquent beha-
viour, t(490) ¼ 6.039, p ¼ 0.000, and risk of depression, t(490) ¼ 2.620 p ¼ 0.009,
were significant, while sense of community danger was not.
Given the focus of interest, we then ran separate analyses for visible minority
and visible majority youth (Tables 1 and 2). The full model accounted for more of
the variability in visible minority youth (R2 ¼ 0.392) than it did for visible majority
youth (R2 ¼ 0.320).
With regard to our second hypothesis, that contextual factors would show a
differential impact on resilience depending on level of risk exposure, our analysis

Table 1. Results of hierarchical regression to predict school engagement by resilience, risk

and supports for Visible Minority Youth (n ¼ 220).
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Variable B SE   B SE E  B SE E B

Constant 11.402 2.274 14.391 2.160 15.176 2.884

Resilience
Individual 0.063 0.061 0.077 0.008 0.057 0.010 0.004 0.055 0.005
Primary relationships 0.114 0.061 0.131 0.081 0.056 0.094 0.077 0.055 0.089
Context 0.368 0.070 0.416** 0.276 0.067 0.312** 0.248 0.065 0.281**
Service Use
Mental health 0.019 0.133 0.009 0.098 0.135 0.047
Corrections 0.669 0.117 0.370** 0.348 0.134 0.193*
Risk
4HSQ delinquency 0.353 0.075 0.337**
CES-D-12-NLSCY 0.014 0.045 0.019
Sense of community danger 0.030 0.107 0.016
R2 0.205 0.328 0.392
F for change in R2 18.457** 19.569** 7.387**

*p  0.05; **p  0.001.

522 School Psychology International 34(5)

showed important differences between visible minority and visible majority youth.
While context remained statistically significant for the two groups (visible majority,
t(267) ¼ 2.873, p ¼ 0.004; visible minority, t(218) ¼ 3.837, p ¼ 0.000), individual
characteristics were also significant for visible majority youth, t(267) ¼ 2.231,
p ¼ 0.027. Furthermore, engagement with youth criminal justice remained signifi-
cant only for visible minority youth, t(218) ¼ 2.602, p ¼ 0.010. Finally, while
delinquency was significant for both groups (visible majority, t(267) ¼ 4.331,
p ¼ 0.000; visible minority, t(218) ¼ 4.702, p ¼ 0.000), depression was significant
only for visible majority youth, t(267) ¼ 3.026, p ¼ 0.003.

Discussion
Findings from this study demonstrate that first, as hypothesized, contextual factors
associated with resilience affect school engagement more than individual or rela-
tional factors among this population of multiple service-using youth. Second, these
contextual resilience factors are most influential in the lives of visible minority
youth, demonstrating the concept of differential impact. School engagement, there-
fore, may be influenced most when service providers (including educators) focus
attention on the needs of young people for cultural adherence and ethnoracial
identification. Individual and relational aspects of marginalized children’s lives
may appear to be more amenable to direct intervention; however, interventions

Table 2. Results of hierarchical regression to predict school engagement by resilience, risk

and supports for Visible Majority Youth (n ¼ 273).
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Variable B SE   B SE E  B SE E 

Constant 5.449 2.058 8.770 2.189 13.290 2.946

Resilience
Individual 0.209 0.057 0.250** 0.175 0.057 .209* 0.126 0.056 0.150*
Primary relationships 0.072 0.058 0.081 0.055 0.057 .062 0.026 0.057 0.029
Context 0.169 0.060 0.196* 0.184 0.059 .214* 0.164 0.057 0.191*
Service use
Mental health 0.211 0.114 .103 0.047 0.119 0.023
Corrections 0.345 0.106 .179** 0.096 0.127 0.050
Risk
4HSQ delinquency 0.307 0.071 0.288**
CES-D-12-NLSCY 0.139 0.046 0.187*
Sense of community danger 0.099 0.085 0.068
R2 0.195 0.239 0.320
F for change in R2 21.347** 7.569** 10.190**

*p  0.05; **p  0.001.

Ungar and Liebenberg 523

that target changing the child’s experience of cultural forces associated with resi-
lience may in fact be more effective at increasing school engagement.
The group of young people in this study, however, are not necessarily the same
as those in other studies of youth engagement. The sample selected here are likely
more representative of the youth who do not appear regularly in school-based
studies. It could, therefore, be speculated that exo-systemic factors that protect
against threats to racial identity and marginalization are most influential in the
lives of youth who face the most adversity, a situation that is more likely to occur
among visible minority youth and other young people who are systemically mar-
ginalized, use of multiple services, and experience the least supports to ensure they
attend school. The identification of factors related to context that are associated
with less school engagement among minority youth in particular suggests that
status as a minority is not in and of itself a risk factor, but exposure to specific
social conditions that cause problems for minority youth creates the conditions
that forecast school disengagement. As case studies of Latino/Latina and Black
youth have shown (Brown & Rodriguez, 2009) students of color are not inherently
at risk for school dropout, but are at risk because of the social and intellectual
alienation that they experience. As Brown and Rodriguez (2009) explain, ‘disen-
gagement from school is a socially mediated phenomenon’ (p. 221). This study’s
results suggest that for these students, contextual factors predict whether they will
have in their lives the protective factors associated with resilience that are required
to engage at school. It should also be noted that while this is an older sample of
youth, and that 12% of the youth had already graduated from high school, the
retrospective nature of the questions asked ensure that the experiences of these
youth as they relate to school engagement are of value to the study. The experi-
ences of those youth who have successfully completed their schooling are particu-
larly important in this regard.

Implications
These patterns suggest the need for educators and policy makers to address the
problem of school engagement at multiple levels, placing much more emphasis on
contextual factors that influence educational choices than is currently done. There
is growing appreciation among professionals concerned with marginalized youth
that addressing their social and cultural needs creates noticeable improvements in
their functional outcomes such as risky sexual practices, delinquency, and school
drop out (Shernoff, & Schmidt, 2008; Shin, Daly, & Vera, 2007).
While most of our efforts to increase school engagement, especially among at-
risk groups such as visible minority youth, have targeted school-level variables like
teacher-student relationships, peer group selection, bullying, and school climate,
our findings suggest that broader contextual factors may also be associated with
whether children come to school or disengage. Factors related to pride in one’s
cultural traditions, a sense of nationalism, experiences of being treated fairly in
one’s community, rites of passage, spirituality and religious affiliation, and other
524 School Psychology International 34(5)

similar factors, may help young people participate in processes that increase their
resilience, which in turn affect their school engagement (Bottrell & Armstrong,
2012). Schools themselves, however, may not be able to influence these broader
social processes without working in collaboration with other service providers who
likely have more contact with the highest need youth, many of whom do not attend
school regularly. School psychologists, social workers, and other school-based
mental health professionals may be ideally suited for this role, given their training
in collaboration and consultation. In addition, educators and school-based clini-
cians alike can create the conditions that reinforce the processes that nurture
resilience and contribute to higher rates of school engagement. For example, com-
munity members may be asked to volunteer as hall monitors and mentors to youth
who may not feel a connection with cultural outsiders but be willing to engage with
adults who share the student’s background. Curriculum may also be used to engage
young people by ensuring that course content contributes to a positive cultural
identification. In each case, our results suggest the need for schools to see them-
selves as important to creating cultural continuity for higher risk youth and to
creating bridges for youth to participate in activities that bring them recognition
from their communities.

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Author biographies
Michael Ungar, PhD, is a Professor of Social Work at Dalhousie University and
Co-Director of the Resilience Research Centre. He has published over 100 peer-
reviewed articles and chapters and 11 books on the topic of resilience and its
application to clinical and community work with children and families with com-
plex needs (the social ecological approach to counseling). His latest work includes a
clinical textbook Counseling in Challenging Contexts, an edited volume of inter-
national papers, The Social Ecology of Resilience: A Handbook of Theory and
Practice, and a novel The Social Worker.

Linda Liebenberg, PhD, is Co-Director of the Resilience Research Centre, and

Adjunct Professor at the School of Social Work, Dalhousie University. She is a
methodologist with an interest in image-based methods and mixed-methods
designs. Linda’s research examines the use of these methods in understanding the
lives of youth living in challenging contexts. She has published and presented inter-
nationally on resilience themes relevant to youth across cultures and contexts.

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