Teacher resilience: Long-serving teachers' perspectives on factors which have sustained them in their careers

Abstract

Concerns have been raised over many years about both the number of teachers leaving the profession and those suffering from physical or mental ill-health, and the impact of this on students and schools as well as on teachers themselves. “Resilience” is a concept which has been used in many disciplines to explain why some people appear to have successfully navigated challenging situations, and teacher resilience has become the focus of a growing body of international research. Whilst it is often presented as a critical factor for teacher retention, student achievement and teacher wellbeing, there is no universal definition for teacher resilience, and relatively few recent empirical studies which seek the views of teachers on this concept.

This thesis investigates the experiences of eight long-serving teachers in England (with careers ranging from 14 to 25 years) to gain a better understanding of what has sustained them through their teaching career, as well as the challenges they have experienced, and how this relates to current conceptualisations of teacher resilience. Teacher-created visual timelines were used to support in-depth interviews, where participants provided considerable detail about the complexities of their journeys as they navigated their careers. Interview and timeline data were analysed using a dual analysis approach to create detailed, complex and nuanced findings.

Findings from this study indicate that teachers face multiple challenges throughout their careers, and these challenges are greatest when they involve more than one dimension of teachers’ practical, cognitive and emotional workload. Teachers are sustained by a combination of environment-centred, role-centred and person-centred factors, with this mix of factors depending on context at different points in time. Findings highlight the impact of school leadership on multiple environmental factors within the school culture and conditions, whilst person-centred factors include teachers’ approach to the role, encompassing agency, acceptance, hope and perseverance.

This research also identifies the significance of transitions between schools as a critical moment of vulnerability, which has not previously received attention in the educational research literature.

Findings also illustrate the individual nature of the relationship between teachers and their environments, and the temporal nature of the balance between challenges and supporting factors. By suggesting teacher resilience is both idiosyncratic and dynamic, this research indicates that both teachers and schools may benefit from better understanding the factors which have the greatest impact on individual teachers at a particular moment in time. Other implications are also proposed for teacher trainers, schools and policymakers, and future directions for research are recommended.