Resilience of higher education academics in the time of 21^st century pandemics: a narrative review

ABSTRACT

The demands arising from the COVID-19 pandemic have amplified the importance of resilience not only for students, but also for academics. This narrative review examines a phenomenon which has received little research attention, despite its significance during the pandemic, namely the resilience of academics in higher education. We refer to this as ‘academic resilience’. The review investigates how academic resilience in higher education has been addressed in scholarship, with particular attention to the five major pandemics from 2001 to 2020. A review of fourteen relevant papers shows a lack of attention to the resilience of university teaching staff. Uncovering how academics overcome and withstand adversity on the one hand, and how higher education institutions have managed and supported the resilience of their staff on the other, this paper offers a conceptualisation of academic resilience that goes beyond the individual/environmental binary in scholarship.

KEYWORDS:

• Resilient academics
• strengths-based
• adversity
• positive adaptation
• occupational stress
• protective factors

Disclosure statement

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

Ethics approval

Necessary ethics approval have been obtained from The University of Melbourne, National University of Singapore, and The University of Hong Kong.

Additional information

Funding

The authors received support from Universitas 21 through the U21 Researcher Resilience Fund.