Teaching as a ‘take-home’ job : Understanding resilience strategies and resources for career change preservice teachers

This paper explores the strategies and resources for resilience activated by a cohort of career change preservice teachers enrolled in a graduate entry teacher education program in eastern Australia. Data were collected through focus groups as the preservice teachers prepared for professional experience placements. A social ecological lens is used as a framework to discuss the range of personal and contextual resources and strategies utilised to activate their individual resilience. The findings revealed that preservice teachers perceived teaching as a ‘take home’ job with the intense workload demands and stresses of teaching impacting on their personal as well as their professional lives that precipitated a range of resilient responses. Supervising teachers and professional experience contexts appeared to impact significantly on preservice teacher resilience and their successful adaptation to teaching.