Xue Lina
School of College English Teaching and Research/Center for Second Language Writing Research, Henan University, Kaifeng, China.
Front Psychol. 2021 Oct 12;12:758925. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.758925. eCollection 2021.
With a high rate of attrition and burnout of teachers as a global concern, teacher resilience has become a trendy topic in the research of their professional development as one of the pillars of positive psychology (positive character traits). However, the literature reveals that little research has been done on the mid-career teachers in the Chinese context, especially on how resilience may be nurtured, sustained, or eroded over time. Focusing on a mid-career EFL female teacher (the author) in China as a case study, this longitudinal self-reflective study employs a narrative inquiry to investigate the challenges that the experienced teacher was encountered with and to depict her trajectories of resilience-building by fleshing out the interaction between challenges, resources, and coping strategies in her three different scenarios. "Hard data," such as teaching journals, reflective field notes, and messages with students were collected and analyzed inductively by using thematic analysis, and "soft data," like memory was also referred to. The findings unfolded challenges confronting the experienced teacher peculiar to the Chinese context and charted a detailed bumpy journey of resilience building in three phases, accompanied by her growing emotional, intellectual, and psychological capacities. Implications are drawn out for teacher resilience building, school leaders, and policymakers.
教师的高流失率和职业倦怠已成为一个全球关注的问题，教师心理韧性作为积极心理学（积极性格特质）的支柱之一，已成为其职业发展研究中的一个热门话题。然而，文献表明，在中国背景下，针对处于职业生涯中期的教师的研究很少，尤其是关于心理韧性如何随着时间的推移得到培养、维持或受到侵蚀的研究。本纵向自我反思研究以中国一位处于职业生涯中期的英语外教女教师（作者本人）为案例，采用叙事探究法，调查这位经验丰富的教师所面临的挑战，并通过阐述她在三种不同情境下挑战、资源和应对策略之间的相互作用，描绘她的心理韧性构建轨迹。研究收集了教学日志、反思性实地记录以及与学生的交流信息等“硬数据”，并采用主题分析法进行归纳分析，同时也参考了如记忆等“软数据”。研究结果揭示了这位经验丰富的教师在中国背景下所面临的独特挑战，并描绘了她在三个阶段构建心理韧性的详细坎坷历程，以及她不断增强的情感、智力和心理能力。本研究还为教师心理韧性培养、学校领导和政策制定者提供了启示。
