Abstract:
This is a follow-up study nested under a large UNESCO-funded project to uncover and preserve stories involving schools and children about their earthquake experiences. It sets out to investigate children’s experiences of a school merger as a secondary stressor of the Canterbury earthquakes. The main aims of this study are to identify the protective factors that contributed positively to their resilience building, and to identify the risk factors that contributed negatively to their coping and adjustment with Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological model as the theoretical framework of this study. The key findings of this study suggest that children do contribute to their own resilience building. Children tended to have protective personal characteristics such as curiosity and optimism. Also, they applied strategies taught by the adults, and had their own creative ways to help themselves and each other to build resilience against various secondary stressors associated with the merger. Secondly, children’s resilience building was also reinforced by external protective factors provided by various actors within their micro-system such as their teachers, family members and their community. Finally, this study found that children were more likely to be well protected within the micro and meso-systems, in which both children and various actors within their immediate systems had more control of their own affairs and environment. On the other hand, negative contributors were more likely to present in the macro-system, in which they had less or no control of the environment and affairs.