“Not Giving Up”: Ghanaian Students’ Perspectives on Resilience, Risk, and Academic Achievement

Abstract

Resilience research began in North America and Western Europe but there is a growing call for exploration of what resilience might mean in specific cultural contexts. Placed within the context of Africentrism and resilience perspectives, this study explores academic experiences of Ghanaian youth in three universities. Semistructured and focus group interviews were used to explore the academic resilience of 30 college freshmen in Ghana. Using narrative inquiry, the study examined the schooling experiences of young people in Ghana who have made it to college despite a myriad of adversities. Academic and socioeconomic adversity stemming from spatial inequality and negative cultural practices emerged as risk factors that negatively influence academic outcomes. Similarly, social support systems in the form of collective family/kinship values, future orientation, and individual characteristic of “not giving up” emerged as protective factors that tend to support academic resilience. Implications of the findings for social work education, practice, and policy are discussed.