Resilience and recurring adverse events: testing an assets-based model of beginning teachers’ experiences

Abstract

The burgeoning literature on ‘resilience’ and especially the paradigmatic change guiding the research has important implications for understanding the experience of adverse events at work. Based on an overview of the relevant literature in developmental, social and clinical psychology, three main assets contributing to ‘bouncing back’ from adversity are identified in order to establish their contribution to beginning teachers’ (first year of teaching) efforts to cope with negative events at school. Specifically, the present study sought to examine how these assets (strengths, social support and coping skills) that have been found to facilitate resilience in extant research, translate to the experiences of teachers’ methods of recovering from adverse events (Study 1) and to gauge the relative contribution of these assets in facilitating the ability to recover from adversity (Study 2). Results indicate that the assets that a beginning teacher brings to the encounters have a powerful influence on recovery fr...