Promoting University Teacher Resilience through Teaching Philosophy Development

Abstract

Teaching in today’s complex and competitive university environment has become increasingly demanding as teachers try to respond to the stress and burnout negatively impacting their work performance. In this environment, it is more important than ever that university teachers build resilience to overcome stress and burnout and continue a career-long commitment to teaching effectiveness. The initial phase of this research systematically identified 39 empirical studies of school teacher resilience, and seven studies of university teacher resilience, to identify key resilience-building factors. The second phase, in-depth interviews, probed nine Australian and seven Canadian university teaching Fellows about their writing of their teaching philosophy. A close review of the outcomes of each phase prompted recognition of the similarity of resilience-building factors reported in the resilience literature and the benefits of developing a teaching philosophy reported by the university teaching Fellows. The similarities suggest that the benefits of developing a teaching philosophy could contribute to building university teacher resilience.