Navigating Changing Times: Exploring Teacher Educator Experiences of Resilience

Abstract

While there exists notable research in Australia and internationally on the ways pre-service and early career teachers develop and maintain resilience, there is a paucity of literature examining the resilience of teacher educators. The teacher education landscape has a dynamic nature, and in the Australian context, there have been multiple changes to policy and accreditation that have impacted on the work of teacher educators, including: the introduction of literacy and numeracy testing and a teaching performance assessment for teacher education students; and strict regulatory controls for providers. This context, combined with the intensification of academic work in higher education settings, has led us to investigate the personal and contextual factors that enable or constrain teacher educators' resilience. In this chapter, we draw on a social ecological model of resilience to explore the factors that sustain and challenge teacher educators in their work, and use the findings to highlight implications for the field of teacher education.

Enablers and constraints to teacher educator wellbeing amidst institutional accountability cultures: a PERMA perspective

“…Significantly, a recent scoping review of what is known about TE wellbeing, stress, and burnout (see Turner & Garvis, 2023) revealed that globally only thirteen studies were conducted in this field between 2016 and 2022, with most reporting on studies from the United States (see, for example, Coyle et al, 2020;Sharp et al, 2018;Padilla & Thompson, 2016). Only two studies were undertaken solely in the Australian context (Gillett-Swan & Grant-Smith, 2020;McDonough et al, 2021) with another international study of TE wellbeing in Canada, the United States, Australia, and England (Kosnik et al, 2017).…”

“…Findings of these studies suggest that exhaustion, burnout and low levels of wellbeing are common for TEs due to factors such as workload intensification and excessive workload (McDonough et al, 2021;Kosnik et al, 2017), job insecurity (Kiltz et al, 2020), supporting student wellbeing (Gillet-Swan & Grant-Smith, 2020; Kiltz et al, 2020), perceived lack of institutional support (Gillet-Swan & Gran-Smith, 2020; Coyle et al, 2020) and teacher-researcher role conflict whereby teacher educators often assume significant teaching responsibilities which are not valued by their institutions (Padilla &Thompson, 2016) Apart from these few studies, limited address of wellbeing has been made regarding TEs and even more specifically those in Australia. Turner and Garvis (2023) concluded from their scoping review that TE wellbeing, stress, and burnout are relatively new and under-researched areas.…”

“…Jay went further to explain that it is essential 'to consider how you will balance social management and self-management'. Research would indicate that such time for personal rejuvenation may be very challenging for the teacher educator to find (McDonough et al, 2021;Kosnik et al, 2017) in the current workscape, indicating that relationships may, in the teacher educator space, present as a doubleedged sword to wellbeing. This finding contrasts with many other studies that espouse the importance of relationships for academics' wellbeing (Marongwe et al, 2020;Wray & Kinman, 2022), highlighting that different kinds of relationships may impact wellbeing differently.…”

“…While certainly an issue Academy-wide, teacher education in Australia faces additional challenges specific to their discipline that exacerbate these already mounting pressures (Hoyte et al, 2020;McDonough et al, 2021). As part of what has been termed a 'Global Education Reform Movement' (GERM) (Ellis et al, 2019;McMahon et al, 2015) teacher education and teacher educators in Australia have seen imposed ever-changing and escalating externally mandated reforms to which they are continually required to respond.…”

Mengapa Anak Muda Mau Menjadi Guru ? Analisis Resiliensi pada Guru di Samarinda

“…Tantangan ini sebenarnya juga memberikan peluang guru untuk meninggalkan profesinya. Riset juga menunjukkan bahwa tuntutan akuntabilitas, perubahan kebijakan pendidikan, dan kapasitas individu untuk bertahan, memiliki peran yang signifikan dalam membentuk resiliensi guru (Mcdonough et al, 2020). Disini lain, peran ganda tersebut dipandang oleh subjek penelitian untuk mencapai keunggulan diri.…”