Resilience Processes in Development: Multisystem Integration Emerging from Four Waves of Research

Abstract

Research on resilience in children advanced in four waves that began around 1970 and led to contemporary integrated models of multisystem resilience. This chapter highlights the history and evolution of resilience science, describing the goals, concepts, and findings emerging from these four waves. The first wave of studies was descriptive in nature, with models and methods focused on identifying individual young people who showed positive adaptation in the context of risk or adversity and the factors associated with manifested resilience. The second wave focused on understanding the processes underlying promotive and protective effects observed in resilience studies, and the third wave applied these findings to interventions intended to foster resilience. The fourth wave, still unfolding, shifted the focus of research to multisystem, multilevel models and processes that shape resilience and development over time. This wave encompasses genetic and biological to sociocultural and ecological levels of analysis and focuses on integrating multidisciplinary sciences on resilience to address multisystem threats to human development and social justice. This chapter defines key concepts in resilience science and provides examples of resilience factors for children spanning individual, family, community, and cultural/societal systems. In conclusion, this chapter discusses the characteristics and implications of contemporary multisystem resilience research for science, practice, and policy.