Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 19(1), 45–48Copyright C© 2004, The Division for Learning Disabilities of the Council for Exceptional Children

Second-Generation Research on Resilience: Social-EmotionalAspects of Children with Learning Disabilities

Malka MargalitTel-Aviv University

The goal of this commentary is to focus attention on the various protective factors examined bythe four studies of this special issue, in order to predict resilient functioning. These factors in-clude internal factors (cognitive information processing, affective information processing—theattachment/proximity conceptualization) as well as external factors such as teacher perceptionsand classroom ecology. By bringing together major themes from these studies, this commentaryaims to explicate core elements of resilience in order to enhance the conceptual clarity of theconstruct within empowerment models, and to point out major directions for future research.Questions emerging from the results yielded by these studies will also be presented.

Resilience refers to the dynamic process involving interac-tions between risk and protective processes—internal andexternal to the individual—that act to modify the effects ofadverse life events (Rutter, 1999). The focus of interest in thisline of research is positive adaptation processes in the contextof significant adversity. The two fundamental characteristicsof the emerging construct of resilience are exposure to sig-nificant threat or adversity and individual variations in theresponse to adversity (Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker, 2000).Four excellent studies were presented at the IARLD 2002symposium, exemplifying trends in the new generation ofresilience research.

Resiliency reflects both the relative inner strength of indi-viduals and any external protective processes (supports pro-vided by school systems, communities, and families) in rela-tion to the impact of risks and vulnerabilities. Within the newgeneration of resilience, a dynamic rather than a static con-ceptualization of resilience has been considered, highlightingthe critical role of schools and families in promoting positiveoutcomes. In line with this tendency, the goal of this com-mentary is to focus attention on the various protective factorsexamined by the four above-mentioned studies in order topredict resilient functioning. These factors include internalfactors such as cognitive information processing (Tur-Kaspa,this issue), self perception of efforts (Meltzer et al., this is-sue), and affective information (Al-Yagon & Mikulincer, thisissue), as well as external factors such as classroom ecology(Wiener & Tardif, this issue) and teachers’ perceptions of stu-dents’ effort investment (Meltzer et al., this issue). By bring-ing together major themes from these four excellent studieson social-emotional characteristics of students with learningdisabilities, this commentary aims to explicate core elementsof resilience in order to enhance the conceptual clarity ofthe resilience hypothesis within empowerment models, andto point out major directions for future research. Questions

Requests for reprints should be sent to Malka Margalit, ConstantinerSchool of Education, Tel-Aviv University, Ramat-Aviv, Tel-Aviv, Israel.Electronic inquiries may be sent to malka@post.tau.ac.il.

emerging from the results yielded by these four studies willalso be presented.

There is growing recognition of the contribution of theconstruct of resilience toward our in-depth understanding ofthe challenges faced by students with learning disabilitiesand of the roots of their heterogeneous functioning (Margalit,2003). Resilience has been defined in the past as a trait—reflecting positive and normative developmental outcomesin the face of risk and challenging conditions. In contrast,current research regards resilience as a dynamic process ofadaptation to a setting that involves interactions between awide range of risk and protective factors, revealing innerenergy resources and external energizing factors (Beasley,Thompson, & Davidson, 2003). This new focus on dynamicprocessing instead of stable traits prompts an ongoing debaterelated to the characteristics of these processes. What remainsto be examined in depth is whether protective factors have adirect and uniform effect—in terms of a main effect on men-tal health—irrespective of the level of adversity experienced.The alternative moderator model that has to be consideredproposes that protective variables do not act in isolation butoperate in interactive patterns in order to buffer individualsagainst the effects of stress, thus predicting heterogeneousoutcomes (Beasley et al., 2003).

STEPS OF SOCIAL COGNITIVE PROCESSING

Analyses of the social-information processing amongpreschool children at risk for developing learning disabili-ties demonstrate the value of separating the processing intodistinctive steps, as is illustrated in Tur-Kaspa’s study. Theresults indicated that even at this early stage of develop-ment, before academic failure was established by the criteriaof the educational system, preschool children with learningdisabilities, as a group, displayed lower social-information-processing skills in comparison to their nondisabled peers.The study shows that these differences were not global, butrather occurred at two unique processing stages: (1) theresponse decision and (2) the enactment processes. Students

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with LD demonstrated their deficiency in the quality of self-generated solutions for resolving social situations. Their lesscompetent solutions cannot be attributed to a smaller poolof information on which to base their response decision,because the LD and non-LD groups did not differ on thenumber and types of solutions generated in the antecedentprocessing step. Teachers’ ratings, in addition to earlierresearch on elementary school children, supported these re-sults for the preschool stage, suggesting that these childrencan be treated as reporting a consistent cognitive difficulty—a unique social-information-processing pattern for studentswith LD.

However, in line with the dynamic conceptualization ofresilience, special attention should be given to unexpectednonsignificant differences between children with and with-out LD when comparing children’s self-report measures andsteps of cognitive processing. These measures reflect areasof strength that were not affected by children’s difficulties,and may thus be resources they can tap when they face fu-ture challenges. Longitudinal studies are needed to uncoverthe mediating contribution of the constructs indexed by theseself-report measures. In addition, these results stressed theneed for examining a differential approach in research onlearning disabilities. We need to develop studies that willmove away from analyzing group means toward the identifi-cation of subgroups of resilient children who continue to viewthemselves positively, similarly to their nondisabled peers,despite their deficient cognitive processing. More studies areneeded to examine the specific cognitive factors that predictpositive self-perceptions and compensate for the deficientsteps in the cognitive processing.

ATTACHMENT IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Affective information processing as presented in Al-Yagon’sstudy of attachment in the context of schools provides an ad-ditional dimension for the prediction of resilient functioningwithin a proximal and distal developmental approach. In thisapproach, distal influences affect current proximal develop-ment through giving unique meaning to the current reality,on the basis of personal experience. They also affect presentinteractions with others as well as age-related demands. Theresults of this study demonstrated that children with LD, asa group, tended to form less secure close relationships withothers in comparison to the pattern of their non-LD peers, andthat these insecure relational patterns correlated with socialand emotional maladjustment.

According to Bowlby (1969), infants internalize their in-teractions with attachment figures into “working models ofattachment,” which stay as mental representations of the sig-nificant others and the self. Securely attached children holdpositive working models of the self and others and have ahistory of satisfactory interactions with supportive figures.Children with avoidant and anxious styles have negativeworking models and a history of frustrating and painful inter-actions with unavailable and unresponsive figures. Childrenwith secure attachment manifest a balance between proximityand exploration, in both ordinary and emergency situations.Moreover, they show a skillful use of the support received

from attachment figures and have confidence in the avail-ability and responsiveness of these figures in times of need(Waters & Cummings, 2000).

Al-Yagon’s study examined the role of attachment styleas a risk/protective factor in explaining socioemotional andacademic functioning among children with LD. The resultsshowed that children with LD, as a group, appraised their pat-terns of close relationships as less secure than did their non-LD peers. Moreover, children with LD reported higher levelsof avoidance and anxiety in their close relationships as com-pared to children with typical development, a higher senseof loneliness, and a lower sense of coherence as comparedto their typically developing peers. The findings consistentlydemonstrated that securely attached children reported a lowersense of loneliness and a higher sense of coherence than didchildren with insecure attachment styles. Thus it is surpris-ing that the attachment style did not play a significant role inpredicting academic functioning and failure of children withLD, adding an important dimension to the understanding ofroots of the academic failure of this group of children.

In line with the resilience model, this study identified asubgroup of children with LD who reported a high senseof coherence and low sense of loneliness. However, a sig-nificant association between resilience classification and at-tachment classification was found only among typically de-veloping children. These results alert researchers that secureattachment indeed comprises an important protective factor;however, it is insufficient in determining resilient functioningof children with LD when it is related to their major area ofdifficulty—academic functioning. This outcome reinforcesthe merit of multidimensional models of protective factorsfor developing adaptive functioning in varied areas of nor-mative performance among at-risk children.

ECOLOGICAL FACTORS

The role of external ecological factors in predicting resilienceis exemplified in the Wiener and Tardif study. These authorsshowed that special education placement makes a differencein terms of the social and emotional functioning of childrenwith LD. Children with LD in inclusive placements reportedmore positive social and emotional functioning than theirpeers in self-contained classes. Children receiving in-classsupport were more popular, had higher self-perceptions ofacademic competence, and fewer problem behaviors thanchildren receiving resource room support. Children in in-clusive classes had more satisfying relationships with theirbest school friends, were less lonely, and had fewer problembehaviors than children in self-contained special educationclasses.

Several differences between placement groups may havecontributed to these differences. However, when looking atexternal protective factors, it is noteworthy that when dif-ferences between placement groups occurred, it was alwaysthe children in the more inclusive settings who fared better.We can conclude that those teachers who have children withLD in their general education classroom for the entire schoolday, who consult with the special education teacher, and whowelcome the special education teacher into their classrooms

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to provide special support for students, have different beliefsand practices than teachers whose students go to a resourceroom for special education assistance. Thus, the special edu-cation placement may be viewed as an external, multidimen-sional protective factor, consisting of teachers’ attitudes andpractice, children’s characteristics, and different peer groupsas a model of adjustment and normative functioning.

THE PARADOX OF EFFORT INVESTMENTWITHIN THE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL

FACTORS PARADIGM

The study by Meltzer et al. (this issue) focuses attentionon effort investment, combining the internal factors and theexternal factors paradigms. Meltzer and her colleagues ex-plored the interrelations among internal factors—students’readiness to invest effort and their ability to employ learn-ing strategies—and external factors—teachers’ ratings ofstudents’ competence and the students’ positive/negativeacademic self-perceptions. In line with classic resilienceresearch, they reported that middle school students withlearning disabilities who displayed positive academic self-perceptions were more likely to work harder and to use learn-ing strategies in their schoolwork than were students withlearning disabilities who reported negative academic self-perceptions. In fact, these positively self-perceived studentsrated themselves as working hard and using strategies asfrequently as students without learning disabilities, despitetheir greater struggle to attain academic success. In addition,teachers validated students’ self-reports, considering thosestudents with learning disabilities who displayed positive aca-demic self-perceptions as working as hard as their peers with-out learning disabilities and also as performing at a similaracademic level as their peers without learning disabilities.

Students with learning disabilities who displayed negativeacademic self-perceptions were judged by their teachers asmaking limited effort and reaching a below-average level ofacademic achievement in comparison with their peers. Theseresults challenge the traditional resilience research, callingfor in-depth explorations into the personal meaning of ef-fort. A cyclical relationship may be conceptualized betweeninternal factors (students’ self-perceptions) and external fac-tors (teachers’ judgments), and the research challenge is todevelop an operational meaning of effort in order to furtherclarify its sources and predictive factors. Further explorationby Meltzer et al. into the effort-related paradox demonstrateddecreased effort for tasks that initiated struggle and frustra-tion. This may be understood in terms of the need for con-trol and the search for meaning (Richardson, 2002). Futureresearch will have to explore what are the resources for pos-itive academic perception as well as for personal energy foreffort investment. It can be concluded that future researchshould examine the critical question that teachers and par-ents keep asking experts: What distinguishes students whoare willing to work harder in order to overcome the impactof their learning difficulties from others who give up?

FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS

This commentary aimed to consider the studies that make upthis special issue within an organizational resilience frame-work, reviewing the buffering power of internal and externalfactors. The outcomes of these studies call for the planningof two major trends in future research.

� To develop comprehensive studies of protective fac-tors. Only the examination of multidimensional self-perceptions and their interrelations may provide a betterunderstanding of the energy sources that predict resilientoutcomes.

� To develop a differential approach for examining stu-dents with learning disabilities in order to tease out thedifferences between resilient and nonresilient samples,and to identify predictive buffers for the risk factors(Margalit, 2003).

SUMMARY REMARKS

Although the term “resilience” has gained popularity in men-tal health research (Olsson, Bound, Burns, Wella-Brodrick,& Sawyer, 2003), the need for greater clarity in examiningthe impact of risk and protective factors for students withlearning disabilities was emphasized throughout this com-mentary. The future challenge is to identify the complex anddynamic transactions and processes among internal and ex-ternal factors for predicting children’s success. The study ofresilience is closely linked with intervention dilemmas. Aresilient-based approach emphasizes the building of skillsand capacities that facilitate successful negotiation of chal-lenges for individuals with identified learning disabilities.Certainly, there is much to learn from the studies presentedin this issue and there is an urgent need to continue examiningthe challenges posed by their results.

REFERENCES

Beasley, M., Thompson, T., & Davidson, J. (2003). Resilience in responseto life stress: The effects of coping style and cognitive hardiness. Per-sonality and Individual Differences, 34, 77–95.

Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. New York: BasicBooks.

Luthar, S. S., Cicchetti, D., & Becker, B. (2000). The construct of resilience:A critical evaluation and guidelines for future work. Child Development,71, 543–562.

Margalit, M. (2003). Resilience model among individuals with learning dis-abilities: Proximal and distal influences. Learning Disabilities Research& Practice, 18, 82–86.

Olsson, C. A., Bound, L., Burns, J. M., Wella-Brodrick, D. A., & Sawyer,S. A. (2003). Adolescent resilience: A concept analysis. Journal ofAdolescence, 26, 1–11.

Richardson, G. E. (2002). The metatheory of resilience and resiliency. Jour-nal of Clinical Psychology, 58, 307–321.

Rutter, M. (1999). Resilience concept and findings: Implementation for fam-ily therapy. Journal of Family Therapy, 21, 119–144.

Waters, E., & Cummings, E. M. (2000). A secure base from which to exploreclose relationships. Child Development, 71, 164–172.

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About the Author

Malka Margalit, Ph.D., is Professor of Education and Head of the Constantiner School of Education, Tel-Aviv University.Her current research interests include identifying factors that predict the resilience of children with learning disabilities anddevelopmental disabilities and those of their families. In her studies she examines social and emotional development and theexperience of loneliness and developing friendship (including virtual friendship—using the Internet).