Book Review: Cultivating Teacher Resilience: International Approaches, Applications, and Impact

Abstract

(Singapore: Springer), 2020, xvi+307 pages, ISBN: 978-981-15-5962-4 Strongly rooted in the theoretical underpinnings and pedagogical implications of positive psychology, teacher resilience is one of the quintessential constituents of teacher-student interpersonal variables that can substantially contribute to the learners' success, motivation, and achievement. It has also been postulated that teacher effectiveness, teachers' classroom practices, and teacher-student relationships in a stress-free environment can have a tremendous impact on students' learning and engagement. Although there has been a growing body of literature on teacher resilience, "rich narratives and systematic knowledge that explicate the important role that teacher education plays in promoting resilience in early career teachers remain, surprisingly, scarce." (p. vii). Additionally, teacher resilience is significant in that teachers need to tackle such problems as shortage, turnover, and attrition which can have deleterious effects on students' engagement, motivation, and success. Reconciling theoretical conceptualizations and pedagogical implications of teacher resilience in thorough ways and elucidating how multifarious disciplinary approaches and educational milieus conceptualize teacher resilience are the foci of Cultivating Teacher Resilience: International Approaches, Applications and Impact, edited adeptly by Caroline F. Mansfield. Being inspired by two Australian projects: Building Resilience in Teacher Education (BRiTE) (Mansfield et al., 2016) and Staying BRiTE: Promoting Resilience in Higher Education (Mansfield, 2016), this research-informed and evidence-based compendium is definitely timely and opportune. The book is organized into three parts, encompassing 18 chapters, written by a gamut of distinguished researchers. Part I, Foundations, including three chapters, lays the foundations of these two projects by presenting a comprehensive overview of the volume (Chapter 1), illuminating and appraising the different ways resilience has been conceptualized, pinpointing the merits afforded by multidimensional perspectives (Chapter 2), as well as contextualizing and exemplifying the development of BRiTE and Staying BRiTE modules (Chapter 3) to boost "pre-service teachers' development of resilience-related skills and strategies, through experiential and online learning" (p. 3). Part II, Implementation and Applications, comprising eight chapters, focuses on implementing particular aspects of cultivating teacher resilience in a range of contexts. Being enlightened with Staying BRiTE, Chapters 4 and 5, set in the Australian context, indicate how resilience learning was implemented in teacher education with pre-service teachers and postgraduate students, highlighting that people-centered dispositions and resilience are interwoven. Moving to