The nature of resilience

In this chapter, we will report a range of research informed studies which plot the path towards new understandings of the nature of resilience in teachers. Advances in research in psychology, positive psychology, neurology, business and organisational studies and other disciplines will provide important conceptual bases for our discussion on resilience in the workplace as a psychological and socio-cultural phenomenon which is best understood as a dynamic process within a social system of inter-relationships. Recent research in education will contribute further to our nuanced conceptualisation of the dynamic and relational nature of resilience in teachers. The chapter will show that teachers’ capacity to be resilient in adverse circumstances and to maintain what we call ‘everyday resilience’ is influenced by and associated with their psychological, emotional, behavioural and cognitive (academically or professionally) functioning within a range of personal, relational and organisational settings. It is not, therefore, an innate, fixed quality but shaped and cultivated by the social, cultural and intellectual settings in which teachers work and live. The chapter will also show that resilience is not a quality that is reserved for the heroic few. Rather, it can be shared by many ordinary teachers who remain extraordinarily committed to serving the learning and achievement of the children on an everyday basis and also over the course of their professional lives.