Which difficulties and resources do vocational teachers perceive? An exploratory study setting the stage for investigating teachers’ resilience in Switzerland

ABSTRACT

Based on an ecological view of teacher resilience, the paper investigates perceived difficulties and resources among vocational education and training (VET) teachers as a first step for investigating teachers’ resilience. Given the substantial shortage of theoretical and empirical studies on this population, more research on resilience among VET teachers is necessary and relevant. In this exploratory qualitative study, interviews with VET teachers in Switzerland (n = 37) sought to identify the specific challenges faced by teachers, the resources to be addressed. As well as confirming the different critical challenges and protective factors emerging from the literature review, the results identify difficulties and resources specific to VET teachers in Switzerland. In terms of critical challenges at a macro-contextual level, teachers’ low social recognition is emphasised. Moreover, exposure to curricular reforms generates stress and pressure related to the required standardisation of content and subject changes. At a micro-system level, we detected teachers’ frustration in relation to students’ low vocational motivation and maturity and specific emerging instructional challenges in vocational subject teaching. In terms of resources, teachers perceived the possibility of diversifying their professional role by alternating school and extracurricular activities as a supportive factor. The results provide a basis for more extensive quantitative study investigating relationship among adversities and resources and resilient strategies.

KEYWORDS:

• Teachers’ resilience
• vocational education and training
• difficulties
• resources

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplementary data can be accessed here.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elena Boldrini

Elena Boldrini is teachers’educator and senior researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (SFIVET) in Lugano, Switzerland. She got a master degree in Communication sciences applied in training contexts (Università della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano - Switzerland) and a PhD in social sciences (Università dell’Insubria, Varese - Italy). Her research and teaching interests include mainly: teachers’ resilience, situation-based learning, teaching analysis of practices through video-annotation.

Viviana Sappa

Viviana Sappa is teachers’ educator and senior researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (SFIVET) in Lugano, Switzerland. She got her PhD in Social and Developmental Psychology at the University of Turin, Italy. Her research interests include in teachers’ resilience, art-based learning, motivation to learn and integrated learning.

Carmela Aprea

Carmela Aprea is full professor of Business and Economic Education at the University of Mannheim, Germany. She holds a Master’s degree from the Goethe University Frankfurt (Germany) and a PhD from the University of Mannheim. Her research interests include: resilience in work and learning settings, financial and economic literacy education as well as technology-enhanced learning and teaching in business and economics education.