Vitality and Coping With Rules: A Qualitative Research Study Among Primary School Teachers

Abstract

This interview-based study investigates how primary school teachers cope with rules to maintain their vitality. It is important to understand how teachers can keep their vitality high as they play an important role in the development of future generations. This study categorized teachers into four groups based on their experience of rules (few or many) and their vitality (high or low): (a) resilient, (b) affected, (c) untroubled, and (d) decoupled. Then the coping strategies these groups used to cope with rules to maintain vitality were studied. It seems that the resilient group of teachers is able to maintain vitality by using different coping styles. Consequently, if teachers became more aware of the coping strategies they could adopt, for example, through coping training, this could help them to maintain their vitality.