Flocking Together: An Indigenous Psychology Theory of Resilience in Southern Africa

Professor Liesel Ebersöhn is widely regarded as a leading scholar and teacher in connection with resilience and resilience-promoting interventions in settings plagued by the structural disparity characteristic of emerging economies, and of Global South countries in transformation. She combines emancipatory and intervention methodologies to investigate pathways to resilience as adaptive socio-cultural responses to chronic and cumulative adversity. Her research focus has had a decided impact on curricula for teacher training at several higher education institutions in South Africa. Her teaching and research outputs demonstrate that higher education can effectively integrate research, teaching and learning, and community engagement. Her pedagogy aligns with global citizenship and education as key strategies for restructuring postcolonial conditions an example being an intervention-partnership she designed which provided educational psychology services to more than 1 000 young people inmarginalised rural settings, and trained 118 MEd (Educational Psychology) students to be socially responsive professionals.Professor Ebersöhn is Director of the Centre for the Study of Resilience and a Full Professor at the Department of Educational Psychology, Faculty of Education, University of Pretoria. She is the Secretary-General of the World Education Research Association (WERA), serves on multiple Editorial Boards (including the prestigious Review of Education Research), is a member of international research panels (such as the International Research and Scholarship Committee (Division C, Learning and Instruction, of the American Educational Research Association), and the Building Resilience in Teacher Education (BRITE) Project Reference Group, Murdoch University). She is a National Research Foundation-rated researcher, and registered educational psychologist. She has received several awards for her research in Education and Educational Psychology. She has held international appointments, including visiting professor at Yale University and Edith Cowan University.

• Chapter 1. Research Road-Trip.- Chapter 2. Global South Risks and Resources.- Chapter 3. Indigenous Psychology Philosophy that Grounds RRR.- Chapter 4. Power and Flocking Processes.- Chapter 5. What Matters for Resilience in Southern Africa.- Chapter 6. Changing the Grain of Grit.