A social perspective on resilience: social support and dyadic coping in teacher training

Abstract

Stress in teaching and teacher training is a well-known issue and stress management during teacher training may not only be affected by individual coping efforts, but also determined by private and work-related networks the individual is integrated in. In that regard, our article aims firstly to identify sources of social support in the German teacher training system and secondly to analyze interdependencies in dyadic coping interactions based on the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model. On the basis of questionnaire data from 307 German trainees and qualified teachers from vocational and general schools, we found that mentors, partners, fellow trainees, colleagues at school, parents, and good friends were named as the most supportive reference persons during teacher training. In a follow-up survey, data from 49 sources of support were obtained, which could be assigned to the corresponding (trainee) teachers (in the sense of support recipients). These dyads thus form the basis for the analysis of dyadic coping interdependencies. The results of the moderator analyses show, among other things, that support recipients who prefer the coping strategy palliative emotion regulation tend to react rather sensitively to contrary coping strategies of the source of support with regard to their stress symptoms. Social interactions in this respect can represent both protective as well as risk factors. Therefore, a system of complex social interdependencies must be considered when analyzing relational resilience among prospective teachers.