1 Introduction

As academics in higher education contexts, teacher educators face multiple demands and an increasingly complex work environment. Neoliberal ideologies continue to dominate education policies and practices in many countries across the globe, including Australia. From a neoliberal perspective, teacher education is being held accountable for boosting the quality of teachers which, in turn, it is argued, will result in the prosperity of individuals as well as the long-term overall economic health of the nation (Cochran-Smith et al. 2018). As teachers are the “key performants who educate the nation’s workforce” (Ro 2018, p. 51), there are intense demands on teacher educators to produce high performing teachers capable of improving student outcomes. The initial teacher education landscape in Australia has also been subject to a raft of additional changes in response to policy reviews focused on improving the quality of teaching graduates (Mansfield et al. 2018). Policy changes including the introduction of additional requirements for graduating teachers in the form of a mandatory Literacy and Numerary Test for Initial Teacher Education (LANTITE) and the introduction of a Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA), as well as the establishment of minimum Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) scores for entry to teacher education programmes, are intended to ensure the quality of teachers entering the profession (Knipe and Fitzgerald 2017). The pressures resulting from neoliberal agendas and these mandated changes have resulted in an intensification of work practices for teacher educators. However, while teacher education appears to be highly scrutinised, there is a lack of knowledge and understanding about the work of teacher educators (Brennan and Zippin 2016), and particularly, of their experiences of resilience.

There exists a significant body of literature examining teacher resilience (see Chap. 2), with this literature also identifying a strong connection between teacher resilience and young peoples’ resilience (Howard and Johnson 2004). In their work, teacher educators play an important role in promoting resilience among pre-service teachers (Mansfield et al. 2018; Mansfield et al. 2016a; Mansfield et al. 2016b), yet despite this there is a paucity of literature that explores teacher educator resilience. In this chapter, we explore teacher educators’ experiences of resilience and examine the enabling and constraining factors that mediate teacher educators’ capacity to thrive in contemporary academic contexts.

2 Literature Review

2.1 The Higher Education Context

The massification and corporatisation of higher education have led to an upsurge in quality assurance and performance measures, greater competition between universities as well as increased student–staff ratios (Helker et al. 2018). The growing intensification of the work of academics in higher education contexts (McNaughton and Billot 2016), has been linked to academics experiencing: a lack of time and increased workload; work–life balance difficulties; university funding cuts; and reduced job security. In an increasingly marketised sector Pitt and Mewburn (2016) argue that academics are positioned as “super-hero[s]” (p. 99) who must conform to university priorities, create excellent teaching and learning environments, and publish prolifically. The intensification of academic work has been accompanied by an increasing audit culture, with Lynch (2010) arguing that “when externally controlled performance indicators are the constant point of reference for one’s work, regardless of how meaningless they might be, this leads to feelings of personal inauthenticity” (p. 55). Billot (2010) argues that academics are constrained by institutional goals that “clash with values held by academics”, who focus on “student learning rather than student numbers” (p. 710).

This disconnect, alongside what Pereira (2016) describes as the “extensification and elasticisation of academic labour” (p. 104), is contributing to academic staff in higher education contexts struggling to manage workloads, mediate university demands and to “maintain their physical and psychological health and emotional wellbeing” (Pereira 2016 p. 100). Reports of high stress and burnout of academic staff in higher education settings are becoming increasingly common (Helker et al. 2018). In this context of intensified work, many universities have introduced health and wellbeing programmes, with a focus on the development of resilience. Gill and Donaghue (2016) argue that such resilience programmes in universities are problematic as, “these interventions systematically reframe academics’ experiences as problems of a psychological nature – a deficient in resilience quotient –rather than structural consequences of a system placing intolerable demands upon its staff” (p. 97). They argue that, within contemporary universities, resilience programmes become technologies of performativity where the individual is seen as responsible for their own destiny, and for their own success, or failure, at negotiating their intensified workload. It is within these intensified higher education landscapes that teacher educators operate, and as such, it is worth considering their experiences of resilience in these contexts.

2.2 Teacher Educators’ Work

As a field of study, Tuinamuana (2016) argues that teacher education lives “on the shifting, intangible border of academia and the professions. As it tries to respond to multiple practice-based and conceptual demands, it is at once criticized and applauded, derided and admired, disparaged and exalted” (p. 334), and by extension, so too are teacher educators. Ellis et al. (2012) argue that teacher educators constitute a distinctive population of academic worker. In an analysis of position descriptions and job advertisements for teacher educators, Tuinamuana (2016) identified that teacher educators are positioned as “super-beings”, who are “bright and glossy, able to do all things, and be all things to all people” (p. 338). For teacher educators, all people include the multiple stakeholders with whom they work—students, university colleagues, school-based colleagues, education departments, government and regulatory authorities.

The dynamic nature of the initial teacher education landscape also contributes to the complex, multifaceted nature of teacher educators’ work with Brennan and Zippin (2016) arguing that the work of teacher educators is hidden and not well understood. Ellis et al. (2014) provides insight into the nature of teacher educators’ work and examines the ways that teacher educators are impacted by the increasingly audit based culture of performance in universities. They contend that many teacher educators struggle to meet the benchmarks for research activity and are “particularly vulnerable to the negative consequences of such audits” (Ellis et al. 2014, p. 35). In examining the nature of their work, Ellis et al. (2014) identified that the job dimension that comprised the bulk of teacher educators’ work was that of “relationship maintenance”, which they described as an activity aimed at “maintaining relationships with students, colleagues in schools and at the university” (p. 38). They identified the cultural and systemic forces that position teacher educators as a category of academic worker who is required to carry out this relationship maintenance work, alongside all the other functions of academic work, but who are not given the material support to do so. As the research evidence suggests that the demands being placed on teacher education academics have changed over time, we are interested in how such changes could impact on the effectiveness, satisfaction and resilience of teacher educators, and subsequently, how this might influence preservice teacher preparation. Ellis et al. (2014) identified that teacher educators described the rewards in their work as coming from “the personal and ‘socially transformative’ nature of their teaching” (p. 39), particularly in relation to the success of students in becoming teachers. In our own work we seek to provide a platform for considering the challenges/constraints and the sustaining/enabling elements associated with teacher educators’ work, and apply a resilience lens to explore the experiences of teacher educators.

3 Conceptual Framework

While there is contention in the literature about the nature of resilience (Baggio et al. 2015; Hazel 2018; Pooley and Cohen 2010), in this chapter, we conceptualise resilience from a social ecological perspective that moves beyond a focus solely on the individual. As Gill and Donaghue (2016) identify, approaches that focus solely on the individual do not take into account the systemic and social forces that impact upon individuals and their ability to be resilient in context. We have drawn from the work of Ungar (2012) who argues that “to understand resilience we must explore the context in which the individual experiences adversity, making resilience first a quality of the broader social and physical ecology and second a quality of the individual” (p. 27). The focus on the interaction between the context and the individual in social ecological models, highlights “the socially constructed nature of resilience and view[s] resilience as the harnessing of personal and contextual resources” (Papatraianou et al. 2018, p. 894). We acknowledge that the interaction between the capacity of the individual and the quality of the broader social and physical ecology in which they are situated is reciprocal, that is, the capacity of individuals to work and teach to their best influences and is influenced by their professional contexts (Gu 2018). In adopting a social ecological model and a strengths-based approach to resilience there is a focus on how individuals and groups can successfully adapt and overcome trying circumstances (Papatraianou 2012).

We use a social ecological framework (Bronfenbrenner 2005) to identify the personal and contextual factors that support resilience, and those which are challenging or constraining (Mansfield et al. 2014). Resilience, from a social ecological perspective, is based on the premise that a person’s resilience is influenced by their own personal factors, such as their biological and psychological makeup, and the interactions with the social contexts in which the person operates. Bronfenbrenner (2005) structures the social contexts into five interacting and overlapping systems: the microsystem; mesosystem; exosystem; macrosystem and chronosystem. Direct interactions between person and environment constitute the microsystem. In the context of our study, these interactions include teacher educators’ relationships with colleagues and with preservice teachers. The mesosystem comprises interactions and interrelations between two or more microsystems in which the person actively participates. In effect, a mesosystem is a system of microsystems (Bronfenbrenner 1981). For teacher educators, these interactions include relationships with colleagues in relation to workplace culture. Settings that do not directly involve the person as an active participant but impact on the person form the exosystem. These may include broader social and organisational structures that affect teacher educators such as accountability and reporting. The macrosystem includes broader sociocultural contexts that influence teacher educators such as values and attitudes of staff and funding/economic factors while the chronosystem represents changes over time, such as the intensification of workload and organisational restructure. This framework offers avenues through which to examine the varying levels and types of “enabling and sustaining” factors that support teacher educators to thrive in academia, as well as the “constraining and challenging” factors that limit their effectiveness and satisfaction.

4 Methodology

This project reports on a questionnaire that was used to identify constraining and enabling factors associated with teacher educator resilience.

4.1 Recruitment of Participants

Invitations to participate in the project were disseminated via email through the following channels: Schools of Education in Australian universities; the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) and the Australian Teacher Education Association (ATEA). Ethics approval for the study was granted by Charles Darwin University and all participants were volunteers. All names and other specific identifiers have been changed to protect the participants’ anonymity.

4.2 Questionnaire

The questionnaire invited teacher educators to reflect on their work and to respond to two prompts: “I feel sustained when”; and “I feel challenged when”. Participants were invited to share five statements in response to each prompt. They were also invited to share a “situation that has stayed with you” either challenging or sustaining, the outcome, and the resources and strategies that they drew upon in the situation. The two questionnaire prompts were adapted from the Teachers’ Ten Statements Test (TST) that has been used to investigate pre-service teacher motivation across cultures (Klassen et al. 2011). Klassen et al. (2011) argue that as a structured qualitative measure the TST enables the elicitation of responses that are “not guided by the researcher’s assumptions in the data-gathering phase” (p. 583). By providing two structured prompts, we were not seeking to foreshadow or assume the factors that might prove to be sustaining or challenging for teacher educators, but rather to use the data to identify those factors as expressed by the participants. A total of 94 teacher educators responded to the questionnaire.

4.3 Analysis

Initially, each of the five members of the research team analysed the data sets independently and employed an inductive approach that enabled the identification of initial codes and patterns within the data set (Patton 2002). Following the individual coding, the team then compared coding and worked to reach consensus on each of the codes. Using a social ecological lens for examining what sustains or challenges teacher educators, we collectively coded the data into personal factors (e.g. motivation, emotional competence, use of coping strategies such as problem-solving) and contextual factors (relationships, culture, workload). After identifying the personal and contextual codes, we then engaged collaboratively in a further phase of coding where we categorized these codes into sub-themes. For example, in personal factors, the codes of achieving goals, agency, control, encouraged, purpose and visible outcomes, were categorized under the sub-theme of “goal setting and achievement”. In establishing these sub-themes of categories, we then applied social ecological theory to the constraints and sustaining factors in terms of: the Individual and Personal factors related to the Microsystem and Mesosystem; the Contextual factors related to the Microsystem, Mesosystem and Exosystem; and the Contextual factors related to the Macrosystem and Chronosystem. In our presentation of the findings, we use n values to indicate the total number of participants from the sample who identified those factors in their response, along with illustrative quotes. In the following section, we examine the factors identified as constraining/challenging or sustaining/enabling teacher educators in their work.

5 Results

Our analysis of the data enabled us to identify the constraining/challenging and supportive/enabling factors that mediate teacher educators’ experiences of resilience. Table 17.1 provides an overview of the levels of the social ecological framework, with the constraining/challenging and enabling/supportive factors. The number of responses from participants is shown in the table as n values. The enabling and supporting factors appear first in the table, followed by the constraining/challenging factors.

Table 17.1 Individual and systemic factors constraining and enabling teacher educator resilience
Full size table

5.1 What Constrains and Challenges Teacher Educators?

In our analysis of the data we identified a number of factors that constrain and challenge teacher educators with the greatest level of challenge for teacher educators associated with contextual factors, particularly those at the meso, exo, macro and chronosystem levels.

As demonstrated in Table 17.1, there were two personal or individual challenges/constraining factors identified at the micro and mesosystem, including a sense of feeling undervalued or unacknowledged (n = 27), with one teacher educator expressing the perception that they feel challenged when “my expertise is not acknowledged”. Similarly, another described that “my work goes unappreciated”, while another expressed that “my work/innovations/ideas are not acknowledged by my supervisors or higher”. Having the ability to maintain a sustainable work–life balance (n = 20) was another personal challenge, with one participant describing that “work invades my home life and affects my relationships”.

In the layers of the micro, meso and exosystem, five contextual factors were identified as constraining teacher educators: intensification of workload; engaging with students; relationships with colleagues and workplace culture; contending with leadership; and, negotiating university structures. The intensification of the workload of teacher educators was identified as challenging by all 94 participants. This intensification of workload was associated with time pressures, increased demands and administrative requirements, and inequitable workload allocations and calculations, with one teacher educator expressing that “my workload increases every year”. One participant described the intensification of workload as something that had stayed with them describing:

With the current agenda of reform and intensification of the work, the gap between what was previously possible and realistic has opened up as a chasm. Hearing advice and strategies from our leadership team around how to manage these competing demands and realising that they are about a decade out of touch with the current demands has really helped me get a fix on my own expectations of myself. I now acknowledge that the problem is not that I do not have the skill set to do the work - but that the workload and available resources to get the work done are no longer realistic or available.

Relationships and contending with leadership were identified as a key contextual challenge (n = 40) with teacher educators describing a lack of vision and communication from leaders, along with a perception of poor decision-making processes from leaders, with one teacher educator noting that “leadership ignore advice and evidence from the field”. There was a concern from some participants that some leaders did not adequately understand the field of teacher education, with one saying, “Senior leaders do not understand initial teacher education work”, while another expressed concern that leaders did not consult, saying “leadership do not include staff in decision making that affects them”.

Relationships with colleagues and broader workplace culture were another key contextual factor that was challenging/constraining for teacher educators (n = 70), with participants describing a lack of communication, limited opportunities for interaction and feelings of isolation. A perception of low morale and conflict between colleagues was also identified as a challenge, with participants describing workplace cultures where “certain colleagues engage in continuous workplace bullying and gossip”.

Within the microsystem, engaging with students (n = 55) was identified as a key contextual challenge, with participants describing low engagement and low attendance from students as something that constrained their work. One participant described the challenge of classes with “too many students”, while another found it challenging that “students are disinterested and disengaged”.

Negotiating university structures (n = 19), with continued restructures without consultation impacting on teacher educators, was also identified as a constraining and challenging factor. Teacher educators described a lack of consultation during restructure processes, with one reflecting:

Yesterday, sweeping job cuts at my institution were announced in forums that were held in three areas of the institution … One of my colleagues … stood up to speak on our collective behalf, concerning the deeper, social implications of these moves (which intend to transform our research-active School of Education into a ‘teaching only’ teacher training site). Several times, university management tried to silence him. But, he continued to speak. When he was finished, I clapped loudly and continued to do so until a critical mass of people, all affected by these job cuts, were also enthusiastically giving applause. This was a pivotal moment for me as a teacher educator. None of our universities are immune from the spread of aggressive managerialism … We must think seriously (and collaboratively) about what our work as teacher educators really means.

At the macro and chronosystem level, participants identified challenges associated with increased accountability and compliance demands, both from external stakeholders, and from universities as institutions driven by neoliberal agendas. While change is a constant in teacher education contexts, it was the pace of change and processes of change management that was identified as a key challenge, with one teacher educator describing that “Things are rushed at a national level prior to semester and not thought through”.

5.2 What Sustains Teacher Educators?

Along with the factors that challenge teacher educators, analysis of the data identified a number of factors that sustain teacher educators in their work. As illustrated in Table 17.1 both personal and contextual factors were identified as supporting teacher educators at the micro, meso and exosystem level. No contextual factors at the macro or exosystem level were reported by participants as sustaining or enabling.

Four supportive and enabling individual and personal factors were identified at the micro and mesosystem level: a sense of recognition and feeling valued; maintaining a work–life balance; goal setting and achievement; and engaging in research and professional learning. In contrast to the challenge of feeling underappreciated, one of the personal factors that sustained teacher educators was having a sense of recognition and feeling valued (n = 68). This recognition and sense of appreciation was identified as coming from leadership, students and the broader university, with one participant describing a sustaining connection coming from being “included and valued”. The ability to maintain a work–life balance (n = 31) was another sustaining/enabling factor, with this balance including the ability to maintain adequate levels of sleep, rest, health and exercise, with one participant describing that they feel sustained when “my health and wellbeing are good”.

Goal setting and achievement (n = 27) was identified as a sustaining factor, that included the ability to set and achieve goals, have agency and control over work, to feel encouraged and have a purpose and visible outcomes. Having the time to engage in research and professional learning (n = 24) was also identified as a sustaining factor for teacher educators, that contributed to a sense of purpose. One participant described that they feel sustained when “I am able to use the research to inform changes and effect change—in my own teaching and in the profession more broadly”.

At the micro, meso and exosystem levels, four factors were identified as sustaining for teacher educators: engaging with students; relationships with colleagues; a negotiated and manageable workload; and receiving positive feedback. Relationships with colleagues (n = 70) were a central sustaining factor, and were characterised by collaboration, collegiality, support, the ability to engage with critical friends and a valuing of productive relationships. Participants described feeling sustained when “colleagues work together to problem solve”, and when “colleagues share the same philosophy, relax and enjoy each other’s company”.

While engaging with students was a constraining factor, it was also identified as a sustaining factor for 76 participants. Teacher educators described students as being sustaining when they felt appreciated by students or when they felt they were helping and making a difference, with one describing “I feel I have made a difference in a student’s life and work”. It was also identified as sustaining when they could see success and growth among students, and when students were engaged while working and when “students get excited about the content being taught”. Associated with this sense of recognition was receiving positive feedback (n = 13), with participants describing it as sustaining when they received positive feedback from colleagues, students or leadership.

Having a negotiated and manageable workload (n = 21) was another sustaining factor, with teacher educators describing having the “time and capacity to do my job to a high standard”. A manageable workload included being “given a work load that affords sufficient time to comprehensively engage with the key aspects of my role as an academic”.

5.3 The Intersection of Constraining and Sustaining Factors

In the longer reflective component of the questionnaire where participants were asked to describe a situation that had stayed with them, and the resources or strategies they used to cope, we were able to identify the intersection between the challenging/constraining and the sustaining/enabling factors. Participants described the way a challenge or constraint manifested in their work practices, but were able to identify those factors that acted as resources to support and sustain them despite the challenge they faced. One participant described facing the challenge of workplace bullying and the ways that supportive colleagues enabled them to navigate the situation:

I was bullied by a previous incumbent of a role I was interviewed for and won, not realising the previous staff member was in the College. I made formal complaints ×3. I had never been previously bullied, it was very distressing over the first year of my employment. The bullying ended when the staff member took a package. The university management seemed unable to manage the behaviour on these occasions. It was the support and kindness of other colleagues that got me through.

Another participant described the impact of budget cuts, intensification of workload and feelings of being undervalued, but also identified the ways that supportive colleagues and students mediated the challenging experiences they faced:

My institution is in the process of a ‘management of change’ encouraging staff to take redundancy to try and cut budgets … existing staff are required to ‘suck up’ a lot of the remaining teaching and roles … There has been lot of pressure put on staff to take on extra work, which makes us all feel undervalued. The challenge for me, is always, to articulate a rationale for not accepting yet more work, particularly when the institution insists we reach a target of hours of work every year. I feel my resilience takes a hit every time I have to advocate for the complexities of my work and the work of others and when this is not heard or valued. Every year I feel I have to ‘go into battle’ for my own job. However, what gets me through this challenge is the people (students and colleagues) I directly work with as we all support each other. Open, honest, and genuine relationships are critical to my overall well-being and being able to sustain challenges in my job.

6 Discussion

The findings of this study highlight the factors that mediate the resilience of teacher educators in contemporary Australian university contexts. The factors identified in the data as either constraining/challenging or sustaining/enabling for teacher educators highlight that resilience is much more than an individual trait, but is rather, a complex process related to the intersection between the person and their context (Ungar 2012). The changing nature of university contexts is highlighted in the contextual challenges that teacher educators describe as constraining their work and impacting on their resilience, and it is particularly interesting to note that there were no sustaining or enabling factors identified at the macro or chronosystems level. This finding is significant given the reciprocal influences of workplace contexts on an individual’s capacity for resilience. For those working in the field of teacher education, this suggests that increased accountability demands from policy, governing bodies and the university as a broad institution are primarily constraining factors upon teacher educators, their work and resilience.

The findings of this study reflect similar findings to that of research examining the resilience process of teachers and the factors that act as supportive resources or constraints for resilient outcomes. The data also highlights the ways that teacher educators drew on the sustaining or enabling factors as resources to enable them to navigate challenging situations in their practice. Collegial support and connections functioned as a supportive resource to enable teacher educators to be resilient in the face of broader contextual challenges and adversity. Through employing these resources, teacher educators described having a sense of collective resilience where they could support each other to navigate challenging and changing times. Jordan (2006) argues that resistance, that is the capacity to resist harmful contextual influences impacting on an individual, is a key element of resilience processes, as is the building of connections with others. In drawing on collegial support, teacher educators describe feelings of empowerment to navigate the challenges they face. Receiving validation of their work as teacher educators and seeing student success and growth was a sustaining factor for teacher educators, reflecting Ellis et al.’s (2014) argument that teacher educators perceive the “rewards” of their work in the success of their students.

In ways similar to school contexts, the role of leadership is identified as a factor that can either support or constrain teacher educators’ experiences of resilience. The findings speak to the challenge for leaders in teacher education in how to support the resilience of their workforce, particularly given the complex demands and the changing nature of the field. The findings also suggest that supporting resilient outcomes for teacher educators requires universities to employ much more than a Human Resources programme about supporting individual resilience, but rather requires that they engage in a careful consideration of the systemic forces impacting on the work of teacher educators and a recognition of the intense workloads they experience. Making the work of teacher educators explicit and visible is a starting point for being able to identify the multiple expectations and requirements that teacher educators face (Tuinamuana 2016), and that constrain their ability to be resilient in the everyday contexts in which they work.

7 Conclusions, Limitations and Future Directions

This study provides insight into a neglected area of research examining the resilience processes and outcomes of teacher educators. The findings from our online qualitative questionnaire shed light on some factors that constrain and challenge teacher educators, while also providing valuable insight into those factors that sustain them and enable them to be resilient in challenging and changing contexts.

However, the limitations of the study must be acknowledged. First, this study was limited to teacher educators in one national context alone. Second, we understand resilience to be a dynamic construct that changes over time. We acknowledge that the responses from participants in our study provide a snapshot of resilience at a particular point in time. In acknowledging this limitation, we suggest that future research might capture data longitudinally. Finally, while the teacher educators were invited to reflect on sustaining and challenging situations in their work-based settings and to identify the resources and strategies they drew upon, the use of a questionnaire may not have allowed the researchers to explore responses as deeply as they could have been through other data collection methods such as through interviews or focus groups. However, this study contributes to the extant body of literature around the resilience of teacher educators. The findings highlight that the resilience processes of teacher educators are not an individual responsibility, but rather, require that higher education providers consider the ways that contextual and systemic forces impact on the resilience of employees in ever intensifying contexts. Universities have a role to play in considering how they can support the resilience processes of teacher educators in meaningful ways, rather than isolated programmes that do not address the systemic causes and challenges to teacher educator resilience. While the findings identify the factors that impact on and mediate on the resilience of teacher educators, future research is required that examines the impact of this on the ways that teacher educators are then able to model and explicitly teach about resilience to pre-service teachers.