Critical Issues in the Application of Resilience Frameworks to the Experiences of Deaf Children and Young People

In this chapter, the authors take a critical look at the application of resilience-based frameworks to the experience of deaf children/young people. They begin by discussing three key issues: the implications of defining deafness as risk or adversity, in the face of which one is required to be resilient; the significance of the socially constructed nature of outcome-oriented definitions of resilience in the context of deaf children; and the extent to which the individualization of resilience may obscure significant aspects of deaf children’s experience in society. They go on to look in detail at how factors and processes associated with resilience may be difficult or differently achieved in the case of deaf children arguing that research is not yet adequate to investigate from d/Deaf people’s perspective how they might define what it is to be resilient. The chapter reviews the small amount of specific research that does exist in relation to resilience and deaf children, but questions whether a concern with resilience is not just ultimately a rebranding of the evidence and insights of the much broader corpus of research concerning deaf children’s optimum development.