Social Psychology of Education 7: 399–420, 2004.

399
© 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Resilient teachers: resisting stress and burnout

SUE HOWARD∗ and BRUCE JOHNSON

University of South Australia

Abstract. In Australia, the incidence of teacher stress and burnout has caused serious concern.
Many studies of teacher stress have focused on the dysfunctional strategies of individual teachers
– in other words they have adopted a deficit approach to the problem with the focus firmly fixed
on ‘what’s going wrong’. From this perspective, the failure of some teachers to cope has generally
been defined as a personal rather than an institutional weakness and the solutions that have been
promoted have been largely palliative or therapeutic. The study reported in this paper adopted a
different approach to the question of teacher stress and burnout. Instead of asking ‘what’s going
wrong’ we asked why are some teachers able to cope successfully with the same kinds of stressors
that appear to defeat others – in other words, we looked at ‘what’s going right’.

1. Introduction
The incidence of job stress and burnout, particularly among professionals em-
ployed in human service organizations, has been well documented over the last
20 years (e.g., Cherniss, 1980a, b; Dewe, Leiter, & Cox, 2000). The fact that
teachers are particularly at risk and that this is an international phenomenon
is indicated by an extensive research literature comprising studies from a wide
range of developed countries (e.g., Kay-Cheng, 1986; Borg & Falzon, 1990;
Schaufeli & Daamen, 1994; Soyibo, 1994; Cheuk & Wong, 1995; Hui & Chan,
1996; Rigby & Bennett, 1996; van Horn & Schaufeli, 1997; Pithers & Soden,
1998; Baggaley & Sulwe, 1999; Jacobsson, Pousette, & Thyelfors, 2001; Chan,
2002; Brown, Ralph, & Bember, 2002).
In Australia, as in other countries, the incidence of teacher stress and burnout
is a cause for serious concern. While individual state education departments
have been reluctant to release details about this issue, some studies carried out
over the last 20 years provide insights into the extent of the problem.
Studies in the 1980s in the state of Victoria found that around 160 teach-
ers each year were superannuated on the grounds of ill-health. Their average
age was 44–45 years and one half to two thirds were retired early because of
psychological ill-health; a further one-tenth retired because of stress-related

∗ Author for correspondence: Tel.: +08 8302 6275; Fax: +08 8302 6239; e-mail:
[email protected]
400 SUE HOWARD AND BRUCE JOHNSON

cardiovascular disorder (Otto, 1986). In the state of Western Australia, a large

study into teacher stress in all education sectors (i.e., primary, secondary, uni-
versity and further education) found that 10–20% of the 2138 respondents were
experiencing psychological distress and a further 9% were suffering severe psy-
chological distress – in both categories, the proportions found were much greater
than for the general population (Louden, 1987). An extensive survey of teacher
workloads and stress undertaken by the Independent Education Union in Victo-
ria and New South Wales (IEU, 1996) found that teachers reported serious levels
of stress which manifested itself in terms of irritability at home (59%) and in
class (55%), anxiety (64%) and feelings of powerlessness (45%). Psychosomatic
complaints (e.g., chronic fatigue, headaches, shingles, heart palpitations) were
reported by 18% of respondents.
Figures like these are cause for concern not least because they represent a sig-
nificant degree of pain and suffering experienced by individual teachers. In addi-
tion, however, they also represent a serious loss of trained staff from a profession
that in Australia, is facing the problems of restructuring, an ageing workforce
and difficulties in recruitment (Bluett, 1998; Della Rocca & Kostanski, 2001).

2. Teacher stress and burnout

Teacher stress and burnout are two separate, albeit linked, phenomena. Kyria-
cou (1989, 2001) sees stress as a negative feeling or emotional state resulting
from work as a teacher. These unpleasant feelings may involve anger, tension,
frustration or depression and are generally perceived as constituting a threat to
self esteem or well-being. Burnout, on the other hand, can be seen as one kind
of job stress that occurs among those professionals who have to deal extensively
with the needs of other people (Maslach, 1981). Emotional exhaustion, feel-
ings of depersonalisation and reduced personal accomplishment are associated
with the phenomenon of burnout (Maslach, 1982). In our view, Le Compte
and Dworkin (1991, p. 91) provide the most useful working position when
they claim: ‘Most investigators describe burnout as a product of stress’, and
that in addition to feeling exhausted, teachers may also feel that their work is
meaningless and that they are powerless, alienated and isolated.
There is general agreement in the literature about the causes of teacher
stress (see Louden, 1987; Dinham, 1993; Punch & Tuetteman, 1996; Pithers &
Soden, 1999). Kyriacou (2001), summarising a number of international studies,
found ten main stressors for teachers. These include: teaching students who lack
motivation; maintaining discipline; time pressures and workload; coping with
change; being evaluated by others; dealings with colleagues; self esteem and
status issues; problems dealing with administration/management; role conflict
and ambiguity and poor working conditions.
RESILIENT TEACHERS: RESISTING STRESS AND BURNOUT 401
The consequences of teacher stress are also commonly understood (see Sin-
clair & Ryan, 1987; Dinham, 1993). From an organizational point of view there
is the significant loss of skilled and experienced teachers through resignation
and/or premature retirement from all levels of the teaching workforce. Those
stressed teachers who stay within the profession, on the other hand, are likely
to be increasingly less effective in key areas such as lesson organization, stu-
dent behaviour management, responsiveness to students and relationships with
parents (Sinclair & Ryan, 1987).
In individual human terms, the costs of teacher stress can be huge and include
impaired health, reduced self confidence and self esteem and damaged per-
sonal relationships. If early retirement or resignation is taken, often the con-
sequence is dramatically reduced economic status. On the other hand, in a
study of teachers who had resigned from the New South Wales teaching force,
Dinham (1992) found that it was common among those participants who had
experienced teaching-related stress to report that these symptoms abated once
they had resigned, despite the fact that often their new occupations were also
very demanding.
According to Kyriacou (2001), the ways in which individual teachers attempt
to cope with stress fall into two main categories: palliative and direct action.
Palliative techniques do not deal with the source of the stress but are rather
aimed at reducing the impact of the stressor. Many studies that look at how
teachers cope with stress (e.g., Sinclair, 1992) show how some palliative tech-
niques involve behaviours that are, in the long run, dysfunctional. Such activities
as excessive drinking, smoking, and avoidance behaviour, for example, are pri-
marily designed to ease feelings of distress even though these behaviours are not
necessarily in the interests of those with whom the individual teacher is interact-
ing. When palliative techniques fail, teachers often take frequent leave and/or
seek medical advice which tends to lead to a regime of medication (Dinham,
1992). For those who do cope with stress through palliative techniques, their
success is often constructed as an individual disposition or strength bolstered
by such ‘mental health’ strategies as regular exercise, hobbies and relaxation
techniques.
Direct action techniques for coping with the stresses of teaching involve
attempts to eliminate the sources of stress. Some studies of the way teachers
cope with stress (e.g., Borg & Falzon, 1990; Cockburn, 1996; Benmansour,
1998; Kyriacou, 2001) indicate that the direct action coping strategies most
frequently adopted by teachers include: taking action to deal with problems;
keeping feelings under control; seeking support from colleagues and/or the
principal; having significant adult relationships outside work; organizing time
and prioritising work tasks; being competent (i.e., thorough lesson preparation
and understanding work to be taught).
402 SUE HOWARD AND BRUCE JOHNSON

A few studies (e.g., Sheffield, Dobbie, & Carroll, 1994; Punch & Tutteman,
1996; Kyriacou, 2001; Dworkin, Saha, & Hill, 2003) have emphasised the impor-
tant role that good administration and management can play in reducing teacher
stress by developing a supportive school culture. The majority of studies,
however, appear to focus on the coping actions that individual teachers can
take to reduce or deal with their stress. In other words, stress and burnout
are still largely seen in terms of individual deficit and coping with them, an
individual responsibility.

3. Stress research and the concept of resilience

Studies of teachers’ coping strategies have provided useful insights into the
condition. However, having undertaken several qualitative research projects in
the area of risk and resilience in children and adolescents (Howard & Johnson,
1999, 2000a, b, c, 2002), we wondered whether a resilience perspective might
add a new dimension to investigations of teachers at risk of stress and burnout.
The difference that a resilience perspective brings is that rather than focusing
on deficit (i.e. what is going wrong) in any given at risk population, research
here focuses on what is going right.
Briefly, Masten, Best and Garmezy define resilience as ‘the process of, capac-
ity for, or outcome of successful adaptation despite challenging or threatening
circumstances’ (1990, p. 425). Early studies in the resilience field (Werner &
Smith, 1987; Benard, 1991; Silva & Stanton, 1996) focused on groups of at
risk children and adolescents and these revealed a consistent and surprising
phenomenon:

Although a certain percentage of these high-risk children developed various

problems (a percentage higher than the normal population) a greater per-
centage of the children became healthy, competent young adults (Benard,
1991, p. 4).

Rather than focusing on those children and adolescents who were casualties
of risk, subsequent studies focused instead on those who had not succumbed.
The questions this work investigated were:

• What is it about these children and adolescents and/or their environments

that enables them to survive?
• What makes them apparently immune to the factors that negatively affect
others?

Individual deficit was not the focus here. The new approach identified indi-
vidual and community strengths (what are generally referred to as protective
RESILIENT TEACHERS: RESISTING STRESS AND BURNOUT 403
factors and processes) and thus, the concept of resilience emerged in the psy-
chological literature.
Only a few isolated studies have appropriated the key ideas and language
of childhood resilience and used them to shed light on the adaptive behav-
iours of various professional groups which experience work-related stress (see
Antonucci, 1991; Gordon & Coscarelli, 1996). Even fewer studies have looked
explicitly at resilience among teachers and how this may be constituted (Bobek,
2002).
The purpose of the present study then, was to explore the experiences of
teachers who were coping very well under highly stressful conditions to see
whether the concept of resilience was applicable. Specifically, the aim was to
discover whether these teachers were drawing on the same kinds of protective
factors that have been identified in the literature on child and adolescent resil-
ience. Effective protective factors include significant relationships and a sense of
connectedness, personal agency or efficacy, social and problem-solving skills,
a sense of competence, a future orientation and a sense of achievement (see
Rutter, 1980, 1984, 1985; Waters & Sroufe, 1983; Garmezy, 1985; Masten, Best,
& Garmezy, 1990; Werner & Smith, 1990; Consortium on the School-Based
Promotion of Social Competence, 1994; Gore & Eckenrode, 1994; Howard &
Johnson, 1999, 2000a, b, c, 2002). Many of these protective factors are simple
and unsurprising. The bonus is that the physical resources required to promote
many of them are well within the capacities of individuals, organizations and
communities to provide. Others require attitudinal shifts and new strategies that
can be taught and learnt.
This paper argues that if the protective factors that support ‘resilient’ teach-
ers are equally learnable and/or simple to promote, then teacher education
faculties, education bureaucracies, school leadership teams and others with
responsibilities for the training, care and management of practising teachers
can help them avoid the debilitating and painful experiences associated with
stress and burnout.

4. The present study

This is a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews to investigate ‘resil-
ient’ teachers’ strategies for coping with stress in day-to-day teaching in some
very disadvantaged Australian schools.
Typically, qualitative research uses smaller samples of respondents than
quantitative research and those respondents are often selected through ‘pur-
poseful’ or ‘snowball’ sampling techniques. In other words, participants are
selected specifically because they are valid members of a certain group (Lincoln
& Guba, 1985; Patton, 1990; Wiersma, 1995; Gall, Borg, & Gall, 1995). A
purposive sampling procedure was used to select teachers to participate in the
404 SUE HOWARD AND BRUCE JOHNSON

present study. This involved making judgements about the selection of par-
ticipants based on theoretical and, to a lesser extent, practical considerations,
rather than on the criterion of randomness. As Morse (1989) writes: ‘... this
method facilitates a certain type of informant with a certain knowledge being
included in the study’ (p. 125).
Small sample sizes and the non-random nature of their selection mean that
the results of qualitative analysis cannot provide generalisable conclusions. As
Burns (1994) suggests: ’The results of qualitative research are generalisable
to theoretical propositions, not to statistical populations and the investiga-
tor’s goal is to expand theories and not to undertake statistical generalisation’
(p. 326). What qualitative research can do well is twofold. First, it can pro-
vide rich descriptions of particular phenomena that often support and provide
human detail for the findings of quantitative research. Second, it can provide
clear indications of fruitful lines of enquiry for larger scale, generalisable quan-
titative projects.

4.1. the setting

This study was set in the northern suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia. This
is a highly disadvantaged area where issues of unemployment, poverty, family
breakdown and interpersonal violence are common. It is unsurprising then,
that the schools in this area face significant challenges from students and their
families on a daily basis and that the teaching environment presents teachers
with many potentially stressful experiences.
In order to support disadvantaged schools, the South Australian Depart-
ment of Education has developed a Disadvantage Index (DI) based on a range
of factors relating to school populations. These factors include parental income,
parental education and occupation, Aboriginality and mobility. The DI ranges
from 1 (seriously disadvantaged) comprising 5.5% of all schools in the state,
to 6/7 (advantaged) comprising 35.2% of schools in the state. Those schools in
the lower categories attract additional funding. The low DI schools are also
identified as ‘hard-to-staff’ because teachers tend not to live in these areas and
choose not to teach there. The principals of low DI schools tend to be young and
have been selected because they are judged to have the requisite skills, expertise
and understanding to work in challenging settings.

4.2. selection of participants

To be able to apply the concept of ‘resilience’ to teachers, two essential condi-
tions had to be met: the teachers had to be ‘at risk’ of stress and burnout by the
nature of their work, and they had to have persistently resisted these outcomes
over an extended period of time. Accordingly, we approached the principals in
3 target schools, all of which were rated as 1 on the Disadvantage Index, and all
RESILIENT TEACHERS: RESISTING STRESS AND BURNOUT 405
of which had been identified by the Education Department as ‘progressive’ in
their approach to working in impoverished communities. One of the advantages
of being so identified is that principals were at liberty to hand-pick a percentage
of their staff.
We asked the principals to identify teachers who were ‘at risk’ of stress and
burnout, due to the nature of their work, but who were ‘resilient’ (i.e. they
persistently and successfully coped with stress). To assist them we provided a
screening device that we had developed (see Fig. 1). Ten teachers were identified
in this way and they were invited to participate in the study. Of these 10 teachers,
9 were female and 1 was male. While this gender breakdown is less than desirable
in research terms, these numbers reflect the heavy gender imbalance in the
schools approached. For example, in one school only one of the 25 teachers
was male. All participants had been at their present schools for at least 2 years.
Four participants were aged between 20 and 29; 4 were aged 30–39 and 2 were
aged 40–49.

4.3. interview schedule

The participants were interviewed individually using a semi-structured inter-
view schedule which was a modified version of the ones we had used successfully
with children and adolescents. Interviews took place in a quiet place in each
school and lasted up to 45 min in length. The interviews were audio-taped for
later analysis.
The interview schedule can be found in Appendix A.
The tapes were transcribed for analysis using NUDIST (QSR 1995), the data
management software tool.

5. Analysis
In our analysis of the interview data, we looked for themes across the transcripts,
for similarities and differences and for absences and silences. We also looked
for the adult equivalents of the protective factors that we found in our work
with young people (Howard & Johnson, 1999, 2000a, b, c, 2002).

5.1. stressors
If there was any doubt in our minds about the difficult conditions under which
teachers in hard-to-staff schools labour, our respondents dispelled them with
calm descriptions of violence and disorder both within the classroom and
outside. They all described incidents where children physically attacked other
children or teachers by throwing furniture, punching, kicking and biting. Maria
provided an example of a physical assault.
406 SUE HOWARD AND BRUCE JOHNSON

Figure 1. Identifying teachers at-risk of stress and burn-out who are displaying resilient and
non-resilient behaviour. (Based on Otto, 1986; Dinham, 1993; Abel, 1999; Kyriacou, 2001).
RESILIENT TEACHERS: RESISTING STRESS AND BURNOUT 407
Maria: I’d probably have to say my most stressful experience was on my
5th day here when I gave a student a Consequence [a punishment
for a misdemeanour] – which was only Time Out [being sent away
from the class to a separate room for a specified period of time].
Obviously in 5 days you don’t know the children perfectly and that
child couldn’t accept it. He was an ADD [a student with Attention
Deficit Disorder] and autistic child and he grabbed me and pulled
me basically to the ground and the force was so incredibly strong
it was a matter of okay how do I deal with this?
Participants also described verbal abuse from children and chronic refusal to
comply with reasonable requests. Karen described this particular kind of stress
along with some others too:
Karen: One of the constant things that you often get from kids here is
refusal. If you’ve actually asked them to do something you get a
lot of ‘I’m not going to do that’ and all of that sort of thing so
that’s a constant one.
Int: What do you do?
Karen: Well we always go through the ‘Steps’ so they’re given a Reminder
and then after a Reminder they have Thinking Time in the class-
room, after Thinking Time then they go to Buddy Class. Then they
get to come back and if they still can’t follow instructions and get
their work achieved and all of that sort of stuff then they have Yel-
low Card. It depends on the severity of what it is. I mean, if they’ve
punched someone in the class then it needs to go straight to Yellow
Card. So probably the big thing is refusal in the classroom. An-
other thing is probably. . . well it’s not a huge stress because we’ve
got a food program here but it’s another thing you have to deal with
if you’re on your way to duty. Quite often kids are not bringing food
for recess and lunch so you need to make sure they’ve got some.
We’ve got a breakfast program where they actually get toast and
make toast for recess or toast for lunch but, do you know what I
mean, it’s another thing that you have to make sure that it’s done
before you go out to duty and things like that. I think the main
thing would be refusal. And then when you’re on duty you quite
often need to be de-stressing kids because they’re all ‘het up’ [over-
excited] and almost ready to fight and so you’re often de-escalating
anger out in the schoolyard and often getting a refusal and verbal
abuse backlash from kids about ’I’m not doing that’ and all the
language that goes with that as well.
As Karen indicates above, other forms of stress cited by the participants
involve knowing that some children come to school hungry, poorly dressed and
408 SUE HOWARD AND BRUCE JOHNSON

often suffering from various kinds of abuse and neglect. As Leanne comments,
dealing with the consequences of abuse and neglect can be very stressful:
Leanne: The worst things that I really find stressful are like, for example, I
had a little girl come to me, her mouth was bleeding and she was
screaming and mum was dragging her into class and you could
see that she was still in the same clothes that she had on yesterday
and no shoes on and things like that and her lip was bleeding.
She was just hysterical and mum’s just dumped her and run and
those are the hard ones and getting to the bottom of the story
and realising that at 3 o’clock this woman is going to come and
pick her up.
Int: What had happened?
Leanne: She obviously was not cooperating on the way to school and mum
had hit her and had been dragging her along and trying to get
her to come to school. She didn’t want to come to school because
she didn’t know whether mum was going to be home when she
got home or whether mum was going to pick her up. It wasn’t
uncommon for her to still be here an hour or 2 hours after school
had finished with no one to come and pick her up and we’d have
to ring grandparents to come and get her.
Although the behaviour and circumstances of children in their classes are
sources of stress for all our respondents, it was remarkable that all of them
highlight dealing with aggressive, abusive parents as the major stressor. Kim,
a principal, described how one child’s father undertook an eighteen month-
long campaign of intimidation involving regular invasions of the school office,
principal’s office and/or staff room to hurl abuse and threats. Cathy describes
another incident:
Cathy: I got abused by a parent last week. She’s a parent well known
for this – she didn’t favour me in abusing me, she’s done it to
quite a few of the staff. I was on the oval on duty and a child
who happened to be in my class came up and said this particular
child had punched him in the stomach. So I walked over to this
child and said ‘What happened?’ and he just sort of looked over
and his mum had jumped the fence and was storming over. So
she was standing over there and I just said ‘What happened?’ and
said it a couple of times and he just ignored me and she came
belting over. She grabbed the kid that was in my class and stuck
her finger right in his face and swore at him and said ‘You touch
my child and f’n this. . .’ at him and he’s only 6! I just stepped in
and said ‘Excuse me..’ and was going to say ‘Excuse me you can’t
RESILIENT TEACHERS: RESISTING STRESS AND BURNOUT 409
do that’ and then she just turned on me and right in my face and
yelling and screaming at me and she grabbed the kid and got in
the car and did a big burnout and left. So that was probably the
worst recent incident. She’s always involved in a bit of fighting
around the school. At first I was a little bit shaken because she
was right in and she is well known for being quite aggressive.

Recognising that angry parents pose a significant threat to both teachers and
students, the South Australian government just recently moved to implement
legislation empowering school staff and police to remove people ‘acting in an
offensive and disorderly manner’ from school grounds and bar them for up to
3 months.
The teachers in this study cited a range of stressors affecting the conditions
under which they work. Frequent physical and verbal abuse from both stu-
dents and parents were serious issues for all participants and perhaps might
be expected in such hard-to-staff schools. What is more unexpected however,
are some teachers’ reports of personal, emotional distress when dealing with
students who are poor, hungry, abused or neglected. In-school behaviour can be
controlled or modified through the application of rules and sanctions and food
programs and clothing exchanges can assist families provide for their children.
Other problems arising in families however are often beyond the school’s or
individual teachers’ power to control or influence.

5.2. resilience: agency

A consistent feature of our participants’ talk in this study was a pervasive
sense of agency – a strong belief in their ability to control what happens to
them (the opposite of which is fatalism or helplessness). This was revealed most
strongly in the way they chose to respond to the aggression and violence, from
either students or parents, which they experienced on an almost daily basis. The
key strategy mentioned by all 10 teachers in the three different schools was to
depersonalise the unpleasant or difficult events. They did this in a number of
ways.
First, they assessed what had happened and if they felt they had acted appro-
priately, they chose not to see the event as their fault or to feel guilty about it.
Melissa, for example, describes the aftermath of being deliberately hit in the
face by a five year old child during yard duty:
Melissa: The rest of the staff were quite supportive in terms of saying ‘It’s
not your fault’ and, ‘We’ve all been there’ sort of thing and ‘It
happens sometimes’ [. . .]. In the end, I think I just said to myself
it was the student and that it could have happened to anyone in
410 SUE HOWARD AND BRUCE JOHNSON

that situation. That I hadn’t brought it about in any way and that
it could have been Sally or Sharon or Ryan or anyone – we all
would have copped it.
Second, they all acknowledged that there had been occasions when they
could have handled things better, but rather than agonise about it they chose
to learn from the event and move on. Teresa provides an example of this:
Teresa: You do have to do a lot of reflecting . . . what will I do next time,
how did so-and-so handle this issue, how would so-and-so have
handled it rather than the way I did. Sometimes you have to stop
and think ‘OK, well maybe I didn’t do this so well today but it
went right last week’ so you can sort of balance it out a bit. This
way you don’t only think about the bad things – because there
are heaps of things that you do wrong. What good is it going to
do if you’re going to sit there and think ‘Oh look I’m the worst
counsellor in the world’. If you say that to yourself you may as
well not come to work the next day
Third, part of our participants’ externalising strategy was to explain the
unpleasant events to themselves in ways that sought to understand the offending
parent’s or student’s motivation and circumstances. Leanne illustrates this
approach:
Leanne: Being patient, understanding where they’re coming from, their sit-
uations, their home life [is important] because normally you’ll find
a reason [for things going wrong] in there somewhere. Something
that’s going on. And don’t take it personally when they lash out at
you or something because you’re just a sounding board for them
and you need to shrug that off. I think that’s a big thing.
Fourth, the teachers have generally been taught strategies to depersonalise
stressful events by others (usually more experienced or senior staff). Cathy was
taught this approach during her first appointment at a Special School:
Cathy: One thing I was taught when I was in Special School is you don’t
take it personally and you kind of remove yourself from it and you
step back and say ‘OK, that’s your choice but it has nothing to do
with me’. If I’ve listened and I’ve done all the steps that I think are
right then they’re just making a choice. I was always taught not to
take things personally.
Another agency-enhancing strategy that 7 of the 10 participants employed
concerns what we have termed moral purpose. All of them had chosen to teach
in disadvantaged schools. To be sure, for some there had been some career
advantage in doing this (i.e. moving from contract to permanent status) but
they were all at pains to point out that the challenging nature of their school is
RESILIENT TEACHERS: RESISTING STRESS AND BURNOUT 411
what had persuaded them to apply for a position. The chance of ‘being able to
make a difference’ in children’s lives and the confidence they could do this was a
strong feature of the teachers’ talk. Far from being naïve, zealous crusaders, our
participants seemed to have a realistic understanding of what and how much
they could do.
Maria: The schools where I did my practice teaching were too pretty,
too nice. You have to see the real world. You have to think about
where you’re going to start your career so, in 4th year I wanted
to come out this way and see what it was like.
Int: Was it a shock?
Maria: To an extent yeah. I don’t know what it is. I guess you have to
have a genuine interest and actually see that what you’re doing
is achieving something. You’re not just here for a job for money,
you’re actually working to change – not to change – to build upon
those children’s values and skills and knowledge [. . .]. I wouldn’t
see myself as the strongest person. You need to have a good heart
to want to make a difference, not just to see it as a job.
Teresa echoes this view:
Teresa: I chose to come to this school and I’m really proud that I have
the strength to keep doing it. I don’t give up on the kids that a
lot of people are saying ‘Oh, he’s just a no-hoper – don’t bother’.
So I think it really comes down to loving your job and wanting
to make a difference.
Melissa made the decision to work in her particular school after her final
teaching practice which took place in another disadvantaged school in the area.
Melissa: After I finished my placement at Davey Downs, I said that I
wanted to come back and work out here after I’d finished. I
thought I could develop skills here that I wouldn’t get the oppor-
tunity to develop elsewhere and I also felt that I, you know, that I
could maybe give back something to the kids as well, that I could
be a strong, committed teacher at a school which needed some
strong committed teachers. So, it was very much a conscious
decision.
Both the strategy of depersonalising stressful events and the strong moral
purpose expressed in their choice of where to teach indicate that these teachers
have a strong sense of their own agency. They have a clear belief in their ability to
affect their own and others’ life circumstances and this translates into practice.
Importantly, all but two of the teachers in this project indicated that they had
412 SUE HOWARD AND BRUCE JOHNSON

learnt the depersonalising strategy either through personal reflection or from

more experienced staff with whom they had debriefed after a stressful event.

5.3. resilience: a strong support group

Resilient individuals have strong connections with others and know that there
are people who care about what happens to them. All of our teachers had
diverse, caring networks of family and friends outside school (interestingly,
only one admitted to having mostly teachers in her social network). All our
respondents had caring partners with whom they could talk about their work
although most claimed they tried to keep ‘dumping their work troubles’ on
their partners to a minimum. What was particularly interesting in this group
of teachers was their unanimous claim of strong support from colleagues and
school leadership.
In all three schools the support of principals, deputy principals and school
counsellors was evident on a daily basis. Two of the schools had instituted a sys-
tem of progressive warnings and punishments for non-complying students (the
‘Steps’ system described by Karen above) in which the final step was the Yellow
Card. This was a card the teacher could send to the front office indicating an
emergency situation in which the teacher needed immediate assistance. All eight
teachers from those two schools were high in their praise for this system and
the fact that when a Yellow Card was issued they did get immediate assistance
from a member of the leadership team.
Cathy: The whole senior staff here are very supportive. They all work
really well together and they’ve got this Yellow Card system so as
soon as you send a note to the Office, someone is there within a
couple of minutes. The problem doesn’t get a chance to escalate
within the classroom because we deal with it straight away. I’ve
been to other schools where you can send three cards and nothing
happens.
Strong caring leadership was also a major source of personal support for all
teachers. The following excerpt is typical:
Melissa: Sharon (the principal) always makes herself available, always
makes it known that she’s there for you for that support. There
have been incidents with parents where they have come storming in
and Sharon has always supported her staff members. She has trust
in us that we’ll do the right thing. You never once feel like you’re
left floating by yourself and I think that makes a big difference.
Here Maria describes how the leadership team (principal and deputy prin-
cipal) responded after a particularly distressing incident:
RESILIENT TEACHERS: RESISTING STRESS AND BURNOUT 413
Maria: [The leadership team] definitely cared. This was the first time I saw
it at this school – they actually cared. This was great. Not just ‘Are
you OK?’ and that’s the end of it, they were interested.
Int: So what does this caring look like?
Maria: They kept on asking whether I was OK. Asking questions, asking
how I was feeling, whether I was happy [about the child’s punish-
ment]. Then when the child came off suspension they asked if I felt
comfortable about this and whether I was happy to sit down and
talk to him before he returned to the classroom. Just little things,
worrying about how I felt and whether I’d be able to cope with his
return to the classroom - whether I’d feel safe.
For regular, daily de-briefing about minor issues and incidents all staff turned
to trusted colleagues. Here the support seems to be less about solving prob-
lems and debriefing about major incidents and more about sharing experiences.
Trusted colleagues can boost morale because they know what you are going
through and can help keep your spirits up. These excerpts are typical:
Rob: I’m pretty much independent but I know I could turn to any mem-
ber of staff and they’d all have a very good listening ear and be very
supportive. I think you find that pretty much in the schools out
here. The staff are very, very supportive, very work-team oriented.
Cathy: Other teachers in the school are [a source of support]. You can
have a bit of a joke with them and I think that helps – laugh it off
a bit. You can walk next door or to whoever you get along with at
school and have a bit of a scream – ‘I can’t believe this happened!!’
and have a bit of a joke and it does make you feel better.
All three schools are fairly isolated, being around 25 km from the centre of the
city. Of the teachers in this study, none lived in the immediate locality and most
lived a considerable distance away, requiring a journey of up to 45 min. While
in other studies geographic isolation has been a source of stress for teachers,
in this study it turned out to be a strength. Several teachers talked about car-
pooling with colleagues and how this provided a valuable opportunity to debrief
and ‘down load’ the day before getting home. Those who drove independently
also claimed that the long drive home from work was beneficial in so far as it
enabled them to calmly go over the day while listening to favourite music. By
the time they arrived home they claimed they had dealt with any school-related
stress.

5.4. resilience: competence and a sense of achievement

The final protective factor concerns pride in achievement and a sense of one’s
own competence in areas of personal importance or significance. For these
414 SUE HOWARD AND BRUCE JOHNSON

teachers the two factors were often linked. Because they were competent at
behaviour management and teaching, their students learnt in orderly class-
rooms. Because they were patient and good at forging relationships with difficult
children, their students made demonstrable progress. Insights into this dimen-
sion of resilience came mainly from asking participants if there was anything
of which they were particularly proud. Here are some of the responses:
Karen: [I’m proud of the way I handle things]. I think you have to have
very clear expectations of the kids from Day One. You need to
be very consistent with your behaviour management and kids
need to see that they’re all getting the same treatment. I think
building positive relationships with the kids and the parents is
really vital because a lot of the parents have had very negative
school experiences so if you can build some positive part into it
that’s good. Hopefully then you’ll get more parent involvement
too.
Leanne: It’s weird. I’m proud of the fact that I can work here, that I can
work with these children and that I have made achievements in
my classroom and my kids are reading and are moving up the
levels in their reading.
Cathy: [I’m proud of the fact that] my kids are reading exceptionally
well. I also won the Coordinator’s position this year so I was
pretty happy with that because that’s the first time I’ve ever really
done anything other than classroom teaching. So that was really
good.
When we asked our participants what advice they would give to an inexpe-
rienced teacher thinking of applying for a position in a disadvantaged school
they focussed on issues of competence, often reflecting their own strengths in
this area:
Leanne: I would say first of all if you’re not like . . . I’m a bit pedantic about
my organization and being prepared. If you’re not organized and
if for one minute it looks like you’re not prepared for what you’re
going to do for that day, that week, that month, the kids will smell
that you’re not on top of things and they will run away with it. You
have to establish your routines. If they don’t know what’s going to
happen, I don’t know whether they get scared or they get insecure,
but that’s when they start to act up and things go wrong. I try to
establish routines really earlyand try not to change them so the
kids know what to expect each day. I try to be consistent with
everything that we’re doing. Even with the praise that you give
and the rewards and then your logical consequences and how you
RESILIENT TEACHERS: RESISTING STRESS AND BURNOUT 415
handle behaviour. I try to always be consistent so that the kids
know you’re a fair person. You have to gain their respect that
way.
Kim: You have to have highly developed behaviour management skills
out here. Without them you won’t last a week. I’ve seen it hap-
pen.
Rob: You need to have a really positive outlook on life. You need
to learn to laugh about things and deal with problems straight
away. Don’t hold problems in and don’t take them on board per-
sonally. I think once you start to do that, that can be your down-
fall. You need to look at problems reflectively though. There may
be something that you could be doing differently, that would
improve the situation or prevent it from happening again.

6. Conclusion
It is not the purpose of qualitative research to produce generalisable findings
applicable to whole populations. What this study does is to provide some human
detail, from an Australian perspective, to help flesh out the international prob-
lem of teacher stress and burnout.
By adopting a resilience perspective, we were able to identify a small group
of teachers who persistently cope well with serious occupational stress and this
enabled us to explore the protective factors and processes on which they depend
for survival. A sense of agency, a strong support group (including a competent
and caring leadership team), pride in achievements and competence in areas of
personal importance are all major protective factors and were all strong features
of the participants’ talk. In general terms, these protective factors and processes
appear congruent with the coping skills identified by larger scale studies (e.g.,
Borg & Falzon, 1990; Cockburn, 1996; Kyriacou, 2001).
Apart from some speculation about whether such qualities as patience might
be innate, all our teachers firmly believed they had learnt the strategies and dis-
positions that made them resilient. Melissa, whose own childhood had been sim-
ilar to that experienced by many of her students, said she’d learnt her resilience
early on and had simply transferred those skills to adult life. Others claimed they
had learnt what skills they needed to survive through quiet reflection on their
practice (usually when things went wrong). They then developed their coping
skills through trial and error. All of them could remember being mentored by
some more experienced or senior colleague.
This study suggests that protective factors that can make a real difference
in teachers’ lives are often relatively simple to organize, easy to support and/or
416 SUE HOWARD AND BRUCE JOHNSON

are learnable. Specific implications for policy suggested by the present study
include the following:
1. The strategy of de-personalising stressful incidents is a simple one that senior
staff and colleagues in any school can teach new teachers and that students
can be taught in their teacher education courses.
2. When principals are at liberty to choose their own staff, they can ensure that
new staff actually want the challenge of a difficult school – that they have
what we’ve called a moral purpose in their choice of work setting.
3. All schools can organize strong and reliable whole-school behaviour man-
agement strategies that will support teachers both in everyday and emergency
situations.
4. Leadership teams in all schools can make support of staff in both professional
and personal issues a priority.
5. All schools can be organized in such a way as to promote strong peer group
support (e.g., work-teams, social activities, supportive rather than competi-
tive school culture). Students in training can be alerted to the importance of
developing strong peer support both within school and outside.
6. Staff achievements should be celebrated and valued.
7. The critical importance of competence in the key areas of behaviour man-
agement, program organization, lesson preparation and the effective man-
agement of resources can be taught both in teacher education programs and
on the job.
Not all schools are disadvantaged, but all schools present their own par-
ticular challenges. Teachers in the ‘leafy suburbs’ schools are prone to stress
and burnout just as those in disadvantaged areas are – you do not necessarily
need to be hit in the face by a 5-years old to doubt whether you are in the
right profession! The value of this study is that by researching the extreme
case of teachers in disadvantaged schools, valuable strategies for survival are
identified. We have shown, moreover, that many of these strategies were learnt
(either by individual teachers or by school leaders). Moreover, support and
encouragement of protective factors, like the ones identified, are easily within
the power of individual schools, education bureaucracies and teacher education
faculties to provide.

Appendix A: Interview schedule

1. Can you give me a brief summary or overview of your teaching career?
2. This school is classified as both disadvantaged and progressive. From your
perspective, why do you think that is so?
3. What are some of the day-to-day stresses that you face teaching in this school?
RESILIENT TEACHERS: RESISTING STRESS AND BURNOUT 417
4. Can you tell me about a few of the most stressful incidents you have experi-
enced teaching here? How did you handle them?
5. Do you have any regrets about some of the things that have happened here?
6. Since you have been teaching here, is there anything that you feel particularly
proud of ?
7. What are your main sources of support? Who do you talk to?
8. What advice would you give a teacher who was thinking of applying to teach
at this school?

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Biographical notes

Sue Howard and Bruce Johnson (Associate Professor) are from the School of
Education, University of South Australia, and have published widely in the
area of child/adolescent risk and resilience. From 1997 to 2002 they conducted
a longitudinal qualitative research project tracking the lives of children initially
judged to be ‘at risk’ or ‘resilient’ by their teachers and others. In addition,
they have completed two major funded studies concerning risk and resilience
in young adolescence, one for the Criminology Research Council of Australia,
and the other for the New South Wales Department of Family and Community
Services. Both researchers have interest and expertise in qualitative research
methods and techniques.