Conceptualizing teacher resilience: a comprehensive framework to articulate the research field

ABSTRACT

In recent decades, the number of publications on teacher resilience has increased exponentially. Despite the numerous rich contributions, the lack of a theoretical consensus regarding the phenomenon’s conceptualisation and operationalisation has hindered dialogue between the various results. This paper aims to address this problem by proposing a theoretical model of teacher resilience as a common framework for organising and articulating existing and future research results in the field. We propose two main ideas for conceptualising teacher resilience, based on Vygotskian Cultural Psychology: a) teacher resilience is a dialectical relationship between the teacher and her everyday professional adverse situations that causes a positive transformation of both the teacher and the situation; and b) this relationship is mediated by cultural artefacts that are distributed in social and professional communities. The paper presents this model and articulates some of the current research on teacher resilience accordingly. It is argued that such a model offers a comprehensive framework for understanding teacher resilience, gives new theoretical significance to current research on the phenomenon, and facilitates further development of the field.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher resilience
• teacher burnout
• teacher wellbeing
• cultural psychology
• mediational meaning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad, the Agencia Estatal de Investigación, and the European Regional Development Fund [EDU2017-87406-P].

Notes on contributors

Alba Vallés

Alba Vallés is a PhD student at University of Lleida, Spain. She is part of the ERIMS research team (http://www.erims.udl.cat/). Her main research interests include teacher resilience, teacher emotions and educational interaction.

Marc Clarà

Marc Clarà, PhD in Psychology, is a Serra Húnter Fellow at the University of Lleida, Spain. He coordinates the ERIMS research team and is the principal investigator of the NARRES project (http://www.erims.udl.cat/). His research focuses on the semiotic mediation of teachers’ emotions and teachers’ practice, as well as on educational interaction, especially collaborative reflection.