Resumen de The importance of resilience in beginning teachers
Gloria Gratacós, Santiago Sastre Llorente, Inmaculada Rodríguez Gómez, Monika Ciesielkiewicz
Teacher quality has been reported as a crucial factor in quality education (OECD, 2005, 2015) since it is a key determinant of student achievement(Rowe, 2003; ISTP, 2016). Teacher motivation and commitment are the corner-stone for the improvement of the effectiveness in the profession (Day, 2008); nevertheless, new and changing challenges in our societies are having a great influence in the classroom and affect teachers’ work and lives. There is a strong relationship between becoming competent and becoming resilient. Teacher resilience is a multi-dimensional concept that can be understood as a process where individual and environment interplay in a successful adaptation in adverse or challenging situations. Resilient teachers are those who can thrive in difficult conditions, have skills to manage disruptive students, have empathy with students with different needs, know how to manage emotions focusing on the positive and have a sense of fulfilment and commitment to their profession.Researchers have built a four dimensional framework of teacher resilience including emotional, motivational, social and profession-related dimensions (Mansfield, Beltman, Price, & McConney, 2012). An online questionnaire on these dimensions was applied to 29 beginning teachers who participated in an induction program in Madrid. Results showed the highest scores on the motivational dimension whereas the other dimensions had few items with high scores. Similarly, the aspects related with communication skills, problem solving and management of emotions had been highlighted as aspects with lower scores. It seems important to study how the resilience process can help to sustain beginning teachers’ efficacy and wellbeing.
