How Do Beginning Teachers Achieve Their Professional Agency and Resilience During the COVID-19 Pandemic? A Social-Ecological Approach

• In Event: Teacher Leadership for Instruction

Abstract

This study, emerging from a large, longitudinal research project, reports a cohort (n=13) of beginning teachers’ professional agency and resilience in their daily teaching practices during the COVID-19 pandemic. From the social-ecological perspective, the participants perceived their professional agency as temporal and relational phenomena by interacting with concrete circumstances. Specifically, the participants’ professional agency during the COVID-19 pandemic mainly revolves around how to facilitate students’ online learning. Meanwhile, the participants mainly achieved two types of resilience, i.e., professional and emotional, which encompass their professional and personal contexts. Implications for facilitating teachers’ professional agency and resilience are discussed.

Author

• Gang Zhu, East China Normal University