The role of relational resilience in teachers’ career-long commitment and effectiveness

Gu, Qing

Abstract

At a time when the contemporary landscape of teaching is populated with successive and persisting government policy reforms that have increased teachers’ external accountabilities, work complexity, and emotional workload, understanding why and how many teachers are able to sustain their capacity to be resilient and continue to work for improvement is an important quality retention issue. The purpose of this paper is to build upon but take further current understanding of resilience in teachers by exploring in greater depth the nature of resilience in teachers as a relational concept and the ways in which it may be related to the learning and achievement of their pupils. The empirical basis of the paper draws upon analyses of twice yearly semi-structured face-to-face interview data from 300 teachers in different phases of their careers in 100 primary and secondary schools in England over a consecutive three-year period. Through these analyses, the paper contributes additional empirical evidence to the emerging but still limited literature on the factors which influence teachers’ capacity to be resilient. The paper concludes with a consideration of the implication of the findings for the quality retention of teachers.

Citation

Gu, Q. (2014). The role of relational resilience in teachers’ career-long commitment and effectiveness. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 20(5), https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2014.937961

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Sep 2, 2014
• Deposit Date: Feb 29, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 29, 2016
• Journal: Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice
• Print ISSN: 1354-0602
• Electronic ISSN: 1470-1278
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 20
• Issue: 5
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2014.937961
• Keywords: Teacher Retention, Teacher Resilience, Teacher Commitment, Teacher Effectiveness
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/737127
• Publisher URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13540602.2014.937961
• Additional Information: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice on 2 September 2014, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13540602.2014.937961