Through Resilience I Decided to Go Back to School Despite being pregnant: Power of resilience

This was a qualitative study to examine the coping coping models used by the pregnant adolescent learners in the rural community of Zimbabwe to help them re-enter the school and stay. This is a phenomenological qualitative study that seeks to answer a crucial gap in the literature with there being limited empirical evidence of the specific mechanisms of resilience and coping strategies that help pregnant adolescents survive in a context of extreme social, economic and institutional difficulties in the rural primary education system in Zimbabwe. A target population of 15 pregnant adolescent learners, 2 teachers, 2 counsellors, 4 parents and 1 official of the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education of Primary and Secondary Education was reached from the total population of 45 pregnant learners using purposive sampling technique. Focus group discussions have been held to generate data, which has subsequently been thematically analysed. One important observation was that pregnant adolescents were remarkably resilient and used a range of coping strategies such as family support, peer networks, self-determination and creative problem solving in reality to overcome the institutional barriers thrown up at them by the system and stigmatisation and enable them to continue studying. The research advocates the programmatic development of school-based resilience programs offering pregnant learners comprehensive psychosocial support, flexible learning space and mentor programme to fortify learner's ability to deal with challenges in the learning environment.

Keywords: adolescent pregnancy, educational re-entry, qualitative study, resilience, rural Zimbabwe.