Introduction

Research has also shown that teacher resilience is crucial not only for dealing with professional challenges but also for enhancing desirable individual and organizational well-being and performance outcomes (Fernandes et al., 2019; Granziera et al., 2021; Lu & Chen, 2023). Moreover, the nature of teaching occupation has also put teacher resilience in need (Chen & Day, 2014). Teaching has been generally considered to be a high-risk profession due to the everyday complexities and increasing accountabilities in education (e.g., Chen et al., 2021; Capone & Petrillo, 2020). It is noted that, on a global scale, the professional life of teachers has been disrupted dramatically due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As the key change agent, teachers who are working on the front-line are required to react swiftly to this situation (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2020). Therefore, teacher resilience is not just a buzzword. It has become a pressing field for teachers to recover, survive, and thrive in their future professional life (Chen et al., 2020; Mansfield, 2021; Zhang et al., 2023).

Despite its need and significance, the research on teacher resilience has been largely lacking (Beltman, 2021; Chen, 2023; Mansfield, 2021). Particularly, the current research has focused on identifying the drivers of teacher resilience but neglecting the essence of teacher resilience, which has resulted in mis-conceptualizing the concept (Gu, 2021). Moreover, it seems no instruments that have been developed from and for teachers to measure teacher resilience through a robust validation procedure. Existing studies on teacher resilience always adopted the instruments from general populations (e.g., Friborg et al., 2003; Smith et al., 2008) or the instruments for the drivers of teacher resilience (e.g., Peixoto et al., 2020). Under this circumstance, the current understandings, such as the components, situation, and its consequences of teacher resilience, may not represent an insightful picture of teacher resilience. Therefore, this paper aimed to re-conceptualize teacher resilience, to develop and validate the Teacher Resilience Inventory, and to explore the relationships to flourishing and emotional exhaustion with three sets of teacher samples from China.

Theoretical and Conceptual Literature Review

Conceptualizing Resilience and Teacher Resilience

Resilience is a psychological construct leading to promising individual and organizational outcomes despite challenges and adversities (Masten, 2021; Richardson, 2002, 2017; Ungar, 2021). The word resilience is derived from the Latin verb ‘resilire’, meaning to ‘jump back’ or ‘recoil’ and translating as ‘bounce back’ (Smith et al., 2013). Given that resilience is an elusive concept, no consensus on its definition has been reached so far (Duckworth, 2016; Masten, 2021). Four developmental perspectives of scientific inquiries on resilience including person-, process-, context- and system-focused perspectives have been identified (Beltman, 2021). First, the person-focused perspective of resilience research was a pursuit of ‘what’ questions, seeking to define resilience as a personal resource by identifying characteristics, capacities and their correlates of individuals who react positively to setbacks (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2013; Masten, 2021). Second, the process-focused approach with ‘how’ questions, uncovering how potential assets or protective/promotive and risk factors work to produce resilient outcomes. The process of resilience refers to “a dynamic process encompassing positive adaptation within the context of significant adversity” (Luthar & Cicchetti, 2000, p. 543). The literature also synthesized the conceptualizations of resilience definitions and reinforced the idea of outcome, which defined resilience as “the process of, capacity for, or outcome of successful adaptation despite challenging or threatening circumstances” (Masten et al., 1990, p. 426). Third, scholars have highlighted the importance of teacher resilience context. Masten and Powell (2003) gave the warning not to focus on the person as resilience is not only a characteristic of an individual. Individuals normally demonstrate resilience in their daily behavioral and life relationships. Fourth, scholars have focused on the system approach, which regards resilience as a dynamic, episodic, multiple-dimensional system, and investigates ‘where’ and ‘when’ questions based on the ‘what’ and ‘how’ questions from the previous perspectives (Bryan et al., 2018; Vella & Pai, 2019).

Although no agreements have been reached for a universal definition of teacher resilience, teacher resilience in this project is regarded as a multidimensional concept that represents a dynamic process of how an individual teacher negotiates with resources and navigates everyday challenges and adversities to move, over time, from surviving to thriving and beyond across one or more systems, leading to positive outcomes for quality education (Chen & Lee, 2022). This definition manifests generic principles of resilience with three major features of resilience (individualized, dynamic, and contextualized) in the current literature drawn from seminal scholars (e.g., Gu, 2021; Mansfield, 2021; Ungar, 2021; van Breda, 2018). This operational definition of teacher resilience functions to guide the research design and data interpretation of this project.

Teacher Resilience Literature

Learning from the work on teacher resilience using the socioecological approach, teacher resilience has focused on three main levels, namely, individual, organizational, and societal systems (e.g., Mansfield, 2021; McDonough et al., 2021; Peixoto et al., 2020). For example, personal traits such as teachers’ sense of humor (Bobek, 2002), optimism (Li et al., 2019), hope (McCann & Johannessen, 2004) and coping strategies of mindfulness (Correia, 2021) have been found to foster teacher resilience in different contexts. Moreover, organizational protective factors such as mentorship support (Mansfield et al., 2016), leadership support (Peters & Pearce, 2012), collegial support (Hong, 2012), supportive relationships (Dempsey et al., 2021), relational trust (Li et al., 2019), support networks (Sullivan & Johnson, 2012), decision making (Johnson et al., 2014), and positive school climate (Li et al., 2019) can promote teacher resilience. The risk organizational factors may consist of heavy workload, time pressure, lack of administrative support (Flores, 2006), limited resources and equipment, challenging teaching assignments (Stallions et al., 2012), difficult parents (Goddard & Foster, 2001), and student misbehavior (Howard & Johnson, 2004). Comparatively, research that focuses on sociocultural factors is scarce. The existing research outlines that educational reforms may matter, for example, national reforms such as a new national Australian curriculum in 2012 and Australian Professional Standards for Teachers in 2011 (The Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership Limited, 2011). Such reforms have contributed to an increasing focus on accountability for teacher quality as a risk factor. It is proposed that policy change, economic change, and social values and norms may influence resilience building, which need further investigation (Gu, 2021; MacCallum, 2021; Mansfield, 2021; Ungar, 2021).

The literature review by Mansfield et al. (2016) found a series of outcomes of teacher resilience. Among many, teacher well-being was the most frequent outcome or correlates in teacher resilience literature. For example, Burić et al. (2019) found that teacher resilience predicted their well-being via emotions, burnout, and psychopathological symptoms in the Croatian context. This result is echoed by other studies including Pretsch et al. (2012) and Rutten et al. (2013). Several studies have shown that teacher resilience is associated with teacher well-being and that the well-being indicators are directly and strongly correlated with the indicators of resilience (Brouskeli et al., 2018; Svence & Majors, 2015). Except for teacher well-being, other outcomes, such as teacher commitment, job satisfaction, and engagement are also identified (Mansfield et al., 2016).

Method and Results

In response to the gaps and concerns above, this paper had the major aims of re-conceptualizing teacher resilience, developing and validating the Teacher Resilience Inventory (TRI), and exploring the relationships to flourishing and emotional exhaustion.

Phase 1. Reconceptualizing Teacher Resilience

Phase 1 consisted of two steps which aimed to reconceptualize the concept of teacher resilience and to develop the TRI using the existing literature and a sample of 25 teachers from China. The research team firstly defined content and dimensions of teacher resilience from existing literature and theories relating to resilience (e.g., Bumphus, 2008; Chen, 2017; Connor & Davidson, 2003; Friborg et al., 2003; Hurtes & Allen, 2001; Shores, 2004; Wagnild & Young, 1993) and teacher resilience (e.g., Daniilidou & Platsidou, 2018; Li et al., 2019; Mansfield, 2021; Mansfield & Wosnitza, 2015; Oldfield & Ainsworth, 2021; Peixoto et al., 2020). The principle of the multi-dimensional nature of resilience was utilized to guide the process (Ungar, 2018, 2021; van Breda, 2018). Six dimensions of teacher resilience with 30 items, namely, professional (4 items), physical (6 items), emotional (5 items), psychological (6 items), social (6 items), and spiritual resilience (3 items), were identified.

Study 1

Sample. Study 1 generated new items and domains (if any) through a convenience sample of 25 teachers from China. 18 females and 7 males participated. They had, on average, 11 years of work experience. They were aged between 30 and 49 years old and their average age was 36. About 60.0% (n = 15) participants taught science subjects and the rest participants taught social science subjects.

Procedure. The participants were asked to (1) share their views of the nature and categories of teacher resilience; (2) share two scenarios in which they experienced most salient teacher resilience relating to their work; (3) share how their resilience was affected and led to desirable outcomes during their work and provide the examples to express how and why that resilience was salient. The interviews took about one hour, were audiotape recorded, and then transcribed verbatim.

Results. Teachers reported a great source of resilience items for six dimensions, namely, professional (4 items), physical (2 items), emotional (2 items), psychological (3 items), social (1 items), and spiritual resilience (6 items) in addition to the items from the literature. As a result, a TRI with 48 items was generated to evaluate each content domain relating to teacher resilience.

Phase 2. Examining the Validity of Teacher Resilience and Its Outcomes

Phase 2 tested construct validity and criterion validity of the TRI and outcomes using two samples of teachers in the sequential empirical studies (Study 2 and Study 3).

Study 2

Study 2 aimed to demonstrate preliminary evidence on the construct validity of the TRI (e.g., reducing items which did not fit well and identifying the latent dimensions).

Sample. 292 primary teachers from China were surveyed on-line. 211 (72.3%) of the participants were females and 81 (27.7%) of them were males. Almost one-third of them (32.4%, n = 89) had less than ten years of teaching experience, approximately half of the teachers (50.9%, n = 140) had between ten- and thirty-year experience, and 16.7% (n = 46) had more than 30 years of teaching experience. The majority of them (72.9%, n = 213) had graduated with a bachelor’s degree, and 26.7% (n = 78) of them were in possession of a junior college degree or below. About 64.7% (n = 189) of the participants taught science subjects and 35.3% of them taught social science subjects.

Procedure and Results. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was employed to generate the model. In the EFA procedure, 12 items were dropped and a 36-item TRI with the same six dimensions remained, namely, professional (6 items), physical (6 items), emotional (6 items), psychological (6 items), social (6 items), and spiritual resilience (6 items).

Study 3

Study 3 aimed to further establish construct validity by examining the psychometric features and criterion validity of the TRI.

Sample. 574 primary teachers from schools which were located from China responded and thus provided a different sample. 130 (22.6%) of them were males and 444 (77.4%) were females. They had an average age of 39 years old and had 16 years of working experience. Less than half of them (39.1%, n = 207) had below ten years of teaching experience, 45.6% (n = 242) had between 10 and 30 years, and 15.3% of the teachers (n = 81) had more than 30 years of teaching experience. 71.6% (n = 411) of them had a bachelor’s degree, 27.2% of them (n = 156) had a junior college degree or below, and 1.2% (n = 7) had graduated with a master’s degree.

Procedure. The first step was to further examine construct validity. The EFA model identified in Study 3 was then evaluated by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The second step was to test the criterion validity (convergent, divergent, and predictive validity) between the TRI and another two measures (flourishing and emotional exhaustion. Convergent and divergent validities were examined using correlation coefficient with the two measures of flourishing and emotional exhaustion respectively. Predictive validity was tested using structural equation modelling (SEM) with the same two measures.

Measure. Although no research has investigated the relationships between resilience, flourishing, and emotional exhaustion in the teacher literature, the student literature has confirmed the positive relationships between resilience and flouring, and the negative relationships between resilience and emotional exhaustion (Berend et al., 2020). The Flourishing Scale consists of four items adopted from the scale developed by Diener et al. (2010). This scale describes important aspects of human functioning ranging from positive relationships to feelings of competence, to having meaning and purpose in life. By contrast, discriminant validity was examined using correlation coefficient with the measures of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI on emotional exhaustion by Enzmann et al., 1995).

Results. First, following the criteria of the EFA procedure and CFA model fit index, and the original scope and principles of developing the TRI, the CFA procedure discarded 12 items. Three trimmed models, namely, Model 1 with one dimension, Model 2 with six dimensions, and Model 3 with five dimensions, were identified and compared (Table 1). The original six-dimension model was discarded as the model solution was not admissible. A 20-item model with five dimensions was given the same analysis and demonstrated a better model fit. These five dimensions were physical, emotional, psychological, social, and spiritual resilience and each dimension included four items (Table 2).

Table 1 Model fit comparison
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Table 2 Teacher Resilience Inventory (TRI) factors, items, and factor loadings
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Second, internal construct validity was also examined using correlation coefficient. Table 3 has shown that the inter-correlations which existed between the five dimensions were in the range from 0.42 to 0.80. They had an average value of 0.65. A logical trend was also apparent with the latent inter-correlations existing between the five dimensions. These dimensions were found to be either strongly or moderately correlated with each other. Such findings on one hand revealed that the five dimensions had a good convergent validity of teacher resilience. This evidence showed that the separate resilience dimensions could be distinguished from each other even if there were high or moderate correlations between them. To conclude, the initial test of internal validity of the TRI suggested a sufficient degree of convergent and divergent validity of its scales. This could have given rise to implications for subsequently testing criterion validity.

Table 3 TRI Descriptive statistics, Cronbach α, and inter-correlations
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Fourth, all factors of the TRI are positively associated with the Flourishing Scale (r ranged from 0.61 to 0.79) and negatively related to the Emotional Exhaustion Scale (r ranged from |.65| to |.80|) (Table 3). Moreover, teacher resilience significantly predicted flourishing and emotional exhaustion (Fig. 1). The structural model identified six significant regression paths leading from the teacher resilience to flourishing and emotional exhaustion. The beta value of all paths ranged from |.22| to |.36| with an average value of 0.29. Flourishing had three positive predictors including emotional, psychological, and spiritual resilience, whilst emotional exhaustion had three negative predictors consisting of physical, emotional, and social resilience.

Fig. 1
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The model shows paths from teacher resilience to job satisfaction and turnover intention

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Fifth, descriptive statistics also showed the state of teacher resilience regarding five dimensions respectively. Particularly, these teachers gave the highest ranking to spiritual resilience (M = 5.28 out of 6), followed by emotional (M = 4.95; SD = 0.72), psychological (M = 4.90; SD = 0.76), social (M = 4.81; SD = 0.78), and physical resilience (M = 4.53; SD = 0.96).

Discussion

Re-Conceptualization of Teacher Resilience

Based on the existing research and empirical evidence presented in this paper, five dimensions of teacher resilience have been identified and the definition and scope of teacher resilience have been re-conceptualized. First, physical resilience may consist of physical strength, recovery capacity, physical adaptability, and self-care (Chen & Lee, 2022; Connor & Davidson, 2003; Mahfouz & Richardson, 2021; Oswald et al., 2003; Resnick et al., 2011). Emotional resilience may include the elements like positivity about the future, reality and myself, self-awareness, emotion regulation, and emotional sensitivity (Friborg et al., 2005; Peixoto et al., 2020). Psychological resilience may consist of motivation, goal-orientation, job fulfilment, commitment, personal growth, perseverance, risk-taking, self-efficacy, initiative, and confidence (Friborg et al., 2005; Patterson et al., 2013; Peixoto et al., 2020; Sotomayor, 2012). Social resilience may refer to sympathy, social competence, social support seeking, social contribution, and social acceptance (Conner, 1993; Patterson et al., 2013; Peixoto et al., 2020). Spiritual resilience may include the components such as sense of mission, ethics, non-avoid, harmony with surroundings, value-driven, acting with awareness, spiritual commitment, non-judgement, insight, and non-react (Chen, 2023; Bergomi et al., 2013; Peixoto et al., 2020; Walach et al., 2006). The literature has dominated by investigating influential drivers, this paper is the first attempt to conceptualize teacher resilience into specific components, which will provide implications for future research to tap into the essence of teacher resilience although more evidence from different contexts is expected.

The Teacher Resilience Inventory

The TRI outlines a general picture of resilience experienced at work by teachers from a multidimensional perspective. Under guidelines of the theoretical-empirical approach of test construction (Oosterveld et al., 2019), the TRI shows strong psychometric properties in terms of reliability, content validity, construct validity, and criterion validity.

The TRI achieved a good content validity procedure. As mentioned above, the advantage of employing both theoretical and empirical strategies was to ensure the TRI developed more authentically to cover relevant items and content domains and covered a greater content validity than those solely generated from existing literature or target respondents (Chen, 2023; Ruscio, 2015). The TRI also demonstrated a good construct validity mechanism. All item loadings in the TRI were greater than 0.50. Unexpectedly, the TRI encompasses only five dimensions that capture the most salient resilience experience of teachers, namely physical, emotional, psychological, social, and spiritual resilience. The professional dimension was opted out after comparing three models consisting of the one-factor solution and six-factor solution. It is possible that the items in the professional resilience dimension could be allocated into the other five dimensions based on the content meaning and their inter-correlations with other dimensions.

The criterion validation provided evidence that the TRI shows a good external validity with two related constructs, flourishing for convergent validity and emotional exhaustion for divergent validity. Moreover, predictive validity testing also showed the significant paths from teacher resilience to flourishing and emotional exhaustion. Hence, the TRI can be used in the primary educational sector in the China context and in other relevant contexts through the adoption procedure. The possibility of adoption in other educational sectors may need further validation investigations. However, it should be acknowledged that as the TRI is a newly developed measurement, the psychometric properties used for the instrument validity may be not always stable. Therefore, further validations are encouraged (Clark & Watson, 2019; Oosterveld et al., 2019).

The relationship Between Teacher Resilience, Flourishing and Emotional Exhaustion

Not surprisingly, the data showed that teacher resilience significantly predicted flourishing and emotional exhaustion (Fig. 1). Except for social and spiritual resilience, emotional, psychological, and spiritual resilience positively predicted flourishing. Moreover, physical, emotional, and social resilience negatively predicted emotional exhaustion. Although not all dimensions of teacher resilience had predictive relationships with flourishing and emotional exhaustion, the current evidence had confirmatively proved this linkage.

Compared with the existing literature in which the associations between teacher resilience are vague, correlated, or predictive, this project clarifies the predictive relationships between teacher resilience and flourishing and emotional exhaustion (Brouskeli et al., 2018; Chen & Lee, 2022; Mansfield et al., 2016). Furthermore, the sense of resilience in this project indicates to strongly relate to the notion of the relational continuum between teacher resilience and well-being-related outcomes (Granziera et al., 2021; Gu, 2021; Oldfield & Ainsworth, 2021; Peixoto et al., 2020). However, as this project employed the cross-sectional method, future research may further identify the impact of teacher resilience on these two constructs and other related constructs with longitudinal designs. In this aspect, this project also leaves room to build a fine-grained continuum that involves drivers, teacher resilience, and outcomes for further research.

Implications

The contributions to theory, methodology, and practice are now outlined in this section. Theoretically speaking, the project will make contributions to advancing teacher resilience literature. It appears that the literature on teacher resilience has grown in the most recent decade (Mansfield, 2021; Oldfield & Ainsworth, 2021). The re-conceptualization of teacher resilience, development of the TRI, and identification of its outcomes will provide a strong foundation for conceptual understanding regarding the nature of teacher resilience, but also in the promotion of additional scientific attempts to study teacher resilience, which, as suggested by Edmondson and McManus (2007), will essentially expand the nature of knowledge production within the field.

Methodologically speaking, this project has produced a multi-dimensional teacher resilience instrument to be accurately measured in their working environment. The TRI provides an instrument which has been validated and developed from and for teachers for further research. In addition, the TRI could potentially be used in future studies with different participants can be tested. The TRI’s emergence, hence, will inspire more research on teacher resilience to be conducted.

Pragmatically speaking, with this post-pandemic period in mind, this project can certainly be considered as being timely. The approaches for enriching teachers’ well-being and job performance via the lens of teacher resilience by reflecting the daily adversities and challenges encountered by teachers (Gu, 2018; Yu et al., 2022). Further, this project will ensure researchers, policymakers, principals, and teachers to have an increased awareness of the importance of teacher resilience. The standards for teachers could include the resilience component as one of the professional capitals for teachers.

Limitations and Future Directions

Two major limitations are noted. First, the participating teachers originated from convenience samples from one district in China. Gravetter and Forzano (2011) have commented that using such a non-random approach could potentially lead to sampling bias occurring. The results of this reported study, thus, can be considered to not be necessarily representative of the greater populations that are of interest. It is suggested that future studies should validate the TRI by using random sampling techniques (Renshaw et al., 2015). Second, self-report data were used in this paper. Although self-report is accepted widely as being a standard method of measurement (Thomas et al., 2019), these kinds of retrospective judgements could be affected not only by the ‘true scores’ of the resilience teachers they have experienced, but also by their beliefs regarding such experiences occurring in different workplace conditions. Future research may include multiple types of data, such as observations, to achieve data triangulation.

To conclude, this project will advance the knowledge base on teacher resilience and will support teachers to possibly negotiate and navigate demands and resources for desirable outcomes in their everyday life, constant change, and unprecedented uncertainties. Resilience is more than bouncing back but bouncing forward. As Cascio (2009) said, “as we look ahead, we need to strive for an environment, and a civilization, able to handle unexpected changes without threatening to collapse. Such a world would be more than simply sustainable; it would be regenerative and diverse, relying on the capacity not only to absorb shocks like the popped housing bubble or rising sea levels, but to evolve with them. In a word, it would be resilience.” (p. 1). Therefore, teacher resilience is not just a buzzword, but a desirable path to a new future for a more resilient society.