Fostering and sustaining teacher resilience through integration of Eastern and Western mindfulness

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, school closures have brought significant disruptions to education throughout the world. This pandemic has affected the mental state of teachers from having to adapt to provide online classes. Teacher resilience refers to the capacity of teachers to survive and thrive in extremely adverse circumstances and sustain their educational purposes. This study attempts to empirically examine the effect of mindfulness on teacher resilience through integrating characteristics of Eastern and Western mindfulness. A concurrent triangulation mixed methodology was applied in this study. In the quantitative part, the cross-sectional questionnaires were completed by 330 teachers who were working in five universities in Thailand and had faced the crisis of COVID-19. The Mindfulness Awareness Attention Scale (MAAS) was employed to quantify mindfulness in Eastern perspective, and the Langer Mindfulness Scale (LMS14) was employed to quantify mindfulness in Western perspective. The Employee Resilience (EmpRes) was used to measure teacher resilience. The estimated structural equation model (SEM) provides strong and convincing support that Western mindfulness positively affects teacher resilience. Novelty seeking and novelty producing which are core factors of Western mindfulness mediate the relationship between mindfulness in Eastern perspective and teacher resilience. Where the survey data were collected, we conducted focus group interviews with five university teachers and executives who had experienced the crisis to understand this relationship in qualitative methodology simultaneously. The findings give additional support to the argument of how mindfulness plays an important role in enhancing teacher resilience. Discussion and practical implications are also included.