Responsive educational proposals to develop skills to meet the demands of the current landscape have become imperative to guarantee inclusive, equitable, and quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all, also reducing the negative impact of COVID-19 and the major post-pandemic social issues. Improving the integral training of individuals and promoting quality of life in society should be the primary objectives of education. In what follows, this article will highlight a core skill that needs to be embedded in teacher education as we prepare our teachers for a dynamic and at times a rather volatile education landscape. If the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything at all, it is that the human race is resilient in the face of adversity. Nevertheless, resilience in educational contexts specifically in teacher training must be conceptualized as according to Kunnari (2018), “Teachers need to be learners themselves, as well as active agents in their own learning in the continuously changing environment” (p.15). While the literature extensively espouses building resilience for teachers already in the system to overcome burnout and work-related stress, it is also important to emphasize the notion of resilience in teacher training.

A desired outcome of teacher education programs is to develop individuals who will be high-quality teachers, experiencing job satisfaction and enjoyment in their work as well as maintaining their motivation, commitment, and enthusiasm for many years. While this outcome may be realized for some, there is concern about rates of teacher attrition. Studies exploring why teachers leave have pointed to teacher stress and burnout (Kyriacou, 2011; Schlichte, Yssel, & Merbler, 2005) and inadequate pre-service preparation for the reality of teachers’ work (Demetriou, Wilson, & Winterbottom, 2009). All teacher education courses include periods of practical experiences in schools and this can be an especially stressful time as students encounter the realities of teaching. For example, Goldstein (2005) found that student teachers experienced a sense of disillusionment from the “contrast between idealized images and realities of the profession” (p. 7). Developing a teacher education curriculum to build resilience in pre-service teachers is valuable for teachers themselves, as well as future employers and school students. While research has identified many personal and contextual resources that are important for teacher resilience, (Day & Gu, 2014; Johnson, et al., 2014), fewer studies point to specific ways teacher education may make a positive contribution to the development of teacher resilience. Day and Gu (2014) have lucidly argued that: “efforts to increase the quality of teaching and raise standards of learning and achievement for all pupils must focus on efforts to build, sustain and renew teacher resilience, and that these efforts must take place in initial teacher training” (p. 22).

The term ‘resilience’ or ‘resilient’ has become commonly used in everyday language and so it is important to clarify what ‘resilience’ means in the context of the teaching profession. In recent years researchers have begun to conceptualize resilience from a social-ecological perspective whereby resilience is “defined as a set of behaviors over time that reflects the interactions between individuals and their environments, in particular the opportunities for personal growth that are available and accessible” (Ungar, 2012, p. 14). Resilience involves the capacity of an individual teacher to harness personal and contextual resources to navigate through challenges, the dynamic process whereby characteristics of individual teachers and of their personal and professional contexts interact over time as teachers use particular strategies, to enable the outcome of a teacher who experiences professional engagement and growth, commitment, enthusiasm, satisfaction, and wellbeing (Beltman, 2015).

Pre-service teachers may develop a capacity for resilience through building personal resources (e. g. motivation; social and emotional competence), understanding ways to mobilize contextual resources (e. g. relationships, support networks), and developing a range of adaptive coping strategies (e.g. problem-solving, time management, maintaining work-life balance) to manage challenges with a view to maximizing adaptive, resilient outcomes (e. g. commitment, job satisfaction, wellbeing, engagement).In a proposed framework conceptualized by Mansfield et.al (2016), building resilience in pre-service teacher education should encompass the following elements:

In presenting their conceptual approach towards building resilience in pre-service teacher education programs, the authors have cautioned that there must be a strong conceptual understanding of resilience, specifically its dynamic and multifaceted nature. This means not only appreciating personal strengths and limitations but developing awareness of the contextual resources and coping strategies that can promote resilience. Resilience develops over time and with experience and will have different manifestations depending on individual and context. Therefore, building resilience should be viewed as building capacity and providing opportunities for ongoing learning and improvement and be incorporated into the curriculum of pre-service teacher education.

References

Day, C., & Gu, Q. (2014). Resilient teachers, resilient schools: Building and sustaining quality in testing times. Oxon, UK: Routledge.

Demetriou, H., Wilson, E., & Winterbottom, M. (2009). The role of emotion in teaching: are there differences between male and female newly qualified teachers’ approaches to teaching? Educational Studies, 35(4), 449-473. doi: 10.1080/03055690902876552

Goldstein, L.S. (2005). Becoming a teacher as a hero’s journey: Using metaphor in preservice teacher education. Teacher Education Quarterly, 32(1), 7-24.

Johnson, B., Down, B., Le Cornu, R., Peters, J., Sullivan, A., Pearce, J., & Hunter, J. (2014). Promoting early career teacher resilience: A framework for understanding and acting. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 20(5), 530-546. doi: 10.1080/13540602.2014.937957

Kunnari I. (2018) Teachers changing higher education: from coping with change to embracing change. Public discussion in the Small Festive Hall of University of Helsinki, 27 October 2018. https://helda.helsinki.fi/ bitstream/handle/10138/248073/TEACHERS.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Kyriacou, C. (2011). Teacher stress: From prevalence to resilience. In J. Langan-Fox & C. L. Cooper (Eds.), Handbook of stress in the occupations (pp. 161-173). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Inc.

Mansfield, C. F., Beltman, S., Broadley, T., & Weatherby-Fell, N. (2016). Building resilience in teacher education: An evidenced informed framework. Teaching and Teacher Education, 54, 77-87. doi: 10.1016/j.tate.2015.11.016

Schlichte, J., Yssel, N., & Merbler, J. (2005). Pathways to burnout: Case studies in teacher isolation and alienation. Preventing School Failure, 50(1), 35-40. doi: 10.3200/PESL.50.1.35-40

Ungar, M. (Ed.). (2012). The social ecology of resilience: A handbook of theory and practice. New York: Springer.

Written by Shubashini Suppiah and George Thomas