An inquiry into teachers' experiences around building resilience and the impact on teaching practice

  • Author(s) / Creator(s)
  • Resilience is an emerging concept within education. While teachers have a prescribed or mandated curriculum to teach, the life experiences of teachers inevitably shape the “other” curricula that are being lived out alongside students. By attending to two teacher-participants’ curriculum-making in regards to their storied experiences around building and fostering resiliency, this study strives to go “beyond the mandated curriculum” (Rosiek & Clandinin, 2016, p. 294). Currently, research on teachers’ resiliency and how this impacts their teaching practice is limited, therefore the need for this research study becomes more critical (Gu & Day, 2013; Shussler et al. 2018). Research questions explored in this study are: How is resilience defined? What does it mean to build resiliency? Does building resiliency impact or shape one’s teaching practice? How might teacher leaders or administrators support teachers’ and students in more attentive ways? Through semi-structured interviews with two teacher participants, the findings in this paper include key themes such as: defining resilience; the role of physical activity; the importance of relationships and role models. This research study explored how these teacher participants have faced life challenges or traumatic events which have shaped their lives and teaching practices. Coming alongside these participants, the researcher (a teacher leader) also shares how this study has shaped her thinking as a mother, leader, and colleague.

  • Date created
    2020
  • Subjects / Keywords
  • Type of Item
    Research Material
  • DOI
    https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-g8hv-f198
  • License
    Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International