The Interplay between Chinese EFL Teachers’ Resilience and Agency

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-3220765/v1

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Research Article

The Interplay between Chinese EFL Teachers’ Resilience and Agency

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3220765/v1

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Background

While teacher resilience has been shown to be a key factor in teachers’ development, a bulk of research on resilience in the field of foreign language education has largely focused on how teachers exercise resilience during challenges. Moreover, the interrelationship between resilience and agency has received sparse scholarship. It is also unclear how teachers in a foreign language context implement and show their resiliency and agency.

Method

This study intends to fill these gaps by investigating foreign language teachers’ perceived resilience had its association with their agency. For this purpose, a mixed-methods design was utilized based on a questionnaire and an interview.

Results

Teachers’ resilience and agency were found to be at a higher level, and there was a causal relationship between resilience and agency.

Conclusion

The impact of uncertainty in the new working situation seemed to have been buffered by teachers’ social interaction with experts and peers. In addition, the role of teacher identity was flagged up in the interplay between teacher resilience and agency. This study advances research on teachers’ resilience with the consideration of agency and suggests implications for teachers and teacher educators to activate teachers’ resilience and agency.

agency

identity

resilience

EFL teacher

mixed-methods design

Having a psychologically healthy teacher can have a positive effect on students’ emotions, personalities, and motivations as well as teachers’ own professional development, mental health, and sense of happiness in life [1–4]. Therefore, it is important to examine teachers' psychological characteristics and discover the relationships among teachers' relevant psychological factors [1]. Research has gradually pinpointed that resilience plays an important role in teacher education with the development of positive psychology (PP) [1, 5–8]. Generally, it is viewed as the ability of teachers to bounce back from challenging events, adapt positively, and perform well in teaching [9]. Resilience is influenced by teacher-environment interactions [10]. Accordingly, it is observed that resilience encompasses a teacher’s capacity to cope with unpredictable situations and operate smoothly in daily life [11, 12] and preserve their mental health and teaching enjoyment [13–15], which has a further impact on teaching effectiveness [16]. However, teacher resilience research, in general, has limitedly focused on language teachers from an empirical perspective [9]. Moreover, there is a commonly held belief that second and foreign language education is one of the world's most challenging and emotionally draining professions [1, 2]. Despite such complications that require toughness on the part of teachers, language teacher resilience has received scant attention in the Chinese context [5, 15]. For Chinese university teachers, where an increasing emphasis has been placed on reform both new opportunities and new challenges have arisen. The continuous advancement of teaching reforms on the surface seems to increase teaching tasks and teaching pressure [16]. The challenges teachers face in such a complicated and stressful environment demand resilience to thrive and survive [15, 18, 19]. It has become necessary to expand the empirical research on Chinese EFL language teacher’s resilience.

Currently, there are numerous scientific studies conceptualizing and examining language teacher resilience from a theoretical and empirical perspective [12, 14, 15]. It has been found that resilience could be promoted and enhanced [11]. Researchers have identified certain capacities that contribute to teacher resilience. It has recently become evident that there is a link between teachers’ resilience and agency, especially their collective effect on teacher identity [17, 19]. However, not very much attention has been paid to the connection between resilience and teacher agency despite indications that they are connected, on the one hand, and the increased amount of research on those topics, on the other. Most studies are correlational and deep triangulated studies are scares in this line of research. Researchers also highlighted a need to examine different forms of teacher resilience to shed light on their mechanism that helps to preserve a teacher’s mental health and position the teacher as an agent in the work [5, 9, 10, 12]. This study, therefore, focuses on describing the resilience of Chinese teachers and its relationship with teacher agency.

Teacher Resilience

The term “resilience” has its roots in the field of materials science. In the 1970s, by applying the concept to the study of child development, it is defined as children’s ability to cope with adverse experiences and the understanding of which prevents several psychological problems [20]. With the development of research on child resilience, there has been an explosion of research on teacher resilience over the last 20 years [5, 13, 15, 18, 21]. It is unclear, however, whether there is a universal definition of resilience or a universal conceptualization of resilience. What is clear is that resilience is a complex and multidimensional construct [22]. One of the pioneering researchers on teacher resilience, defines teacher resilience as “the ability to adjust to varied situations and increase one’s competence in the face of adverse conditions” (p 25) [23]. Moreover, teachers’ resilience is concerned about “using energy productively to achieve school goals in the face of adverse conditions” [24]. Similarly, it is regarded teacher resilience as the capacity to bounce back and recover strengths or spirit quickly and efficiently in the face of adversity [25]. A study concluds that teacher resilience went beyond being a competency and that it is both a process and an outcome [26].

Overall, there are some central aspects of resilience most researchers agree on: adversities are the prerequisites to define teacher resilience and the ability or capacity to adapt is the goal for teacher resilience. Additionally, a recent consensus has been reached that teacher resilience is a social construct as well as a process of interaction between individuals and their environment [11, 22, 27, 28]. Thus, the definitions can be divided into the ability/capacity-oriented and process-oriented perspectives [5]. They also argued that the two perspectives were not contradicted because of the similar assumptions that people have regarding the potential ability to face challenges and recover from them. However, the two varied in the conceptualization and methodology in that the ability orientation regarded resilience as a psychological variable, which can be measured quantitatively, while the process orientation highlighted resilience as a dynamic process, which can be observed qualitatively. As a result, this paper incorporates both of these considerations. In this study, language teacher resilience is conceptualized as teachers’ psychological capacity that allows them to overcome adversity in their work that can be constructed in an interactive process with surroundings.

Teacher Agency

The concept of agency is intricate and involves various perspectives, each of which is built on distinct presumptions. Agency is the action taken by individuals in the sociocultural context [29]. Similarly, agency is regarded as “the socioculturally mediated ability to act” [30]. In terms of stressing the interaction between individuals and sociocultural factors, the conceptualization of agency tends to be a capacity for agency actions, which focuses on how the agency is mediated within a specific context [31, 32]. Referring to agency actions, there is a focus on the interrelationship between agency beliefs and actions in the context of organizational behavior [33]. The authors define agency beliefs as the extent to which individuals perceive themselves as being in control of their own actions and outcomes. This study suggests that agency beliefs are an important factor in determining individual behavior and outcomes in organizational settings. Understanding and cultivating agency beliefs can help individuals to take control of their actions and achieve their goals more effectively.

Additionally, it can be regarded teacher agency as the ability to influence, make choices, and take stances to influence one’s work [34]. it can be defined as the deliberate authority to make choices and act out in a particular context [35]. It can also be interpreted as “the capacity of teachers to actively and autonomously initiate and direct their own teaching practices” [36], which refers what human individuals need to achieve through efforts. Even though the three definitions reviewed above present different expressions, each stresses the capacity of forming an intention for a particular course of action and achieve the chosen actions. Along these lines, language teacher agency, in the present study, is theorized as a teachers’ capacity to hold agency beliefs and take agency actions in the class.

Teacher Resilience and Agency

In the available literature, there is evidence on the interrelationship between teacher resilience and teacher agency, especially their collective influence on identity formation [19]. Empirically, there was a fit theoretical framework that combined the two constructs, and investigated explore how language teachers’ agency and resilience co-evolve to help them conquer the demanding time [17]. According to their research, teacher agency, and resilience were co-evolved by their self-reflection and interactions with others, and were developed by the specific circumstances and environment in which they operate. In examining the transition experiences of four early career teachers in their first year of teaching, it was concluded that teacher identity, resilience, and agency in tandem shaped how teachers dealt with the pressures they faced during their transition [37].

Although such indications have quite successfully echoed the previous calls for the reciprocal interrelationship between teacher resilience and teacher agency especially in teacher preparation programs [38, 39], nuanced findings regarding their connection has recently emerged. For example, analyzed interviews, observations, and log data of 13 beginning teachers in China, it assessed the beginning teachers’ agency and resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic [40]. Taking a social-ecological perspective, they found that teachers’ agency to learn and teach was supported by their resilience across individual, professional, institutional, and community contexts. However, more discussions and empirical research are required for further scrutiny.

So far, many researchers have recognized the importance of teacher resilience and agency to improve teachers’ development and their link. However, there is still a lack of research in EFL contexts that deeply examines how these two factors interact with each other from a triangulated approach. Motivated by this gap, this study examined the relationships between the two factors. Specifically, the following research questions were formulated and pursued:

1) What are the levels of teacher resilience and teacher agency among Chinese EFL teachers?

2) What are the interrelationships between Chinese EFL teacher resilience and teacher agency?

Participants

The participants of this study were 110 EFL teachers in Chinese universities. They came from different universities and locations with different English language-related majors. The participants were recruited through professional contacts. An anonymous survey was given to the participants on resilience and teacher agency related to their work. After removing invalid surveys (e.g., those with straight-lining responses with the same answers on a series of rating scales), 108 valid ones were used in the subsequent data analyses. Of the 108 participants (87% female), were from 31 to 40 years old (53.9%). In addition, the majority of them hold a master’s degree (50. 9%), and 22. 2% hold a doctor’s degree. Moreover, 30.3% were doctoral or postdoctoral. The majority of the participants have beyond 10 years of working (52.8%) and between 3 and 5 years (17.6%). In addition, the majority of the participants were lecturers or assistant professors (67.6%) and 15.7% were associate professors.

Four participating teachers were selected based on voluntary participation from open questions in the questionnaire. The teachers (all the names are pseudonyms) hold Ph.D. degrees or were Ph.D. students in English linguistics and literature. In addition, they taught university English courses, and two were female and one was male (Table 1).

Table 1

*Demographic information of the participants*
Participants	Gender	Age	Years of Working	Degree
Maria	Female	28	2	MA (Ph.D student)
Nancy	Female	35	11	Ph.D
Frank	Male	37	15	MA (Ph.D student)
Tara	Female	42	22	Ph.D

Instruments

Teacher Resilience Scale

Two previously developed scales [5, 9] were used to measure this construct in this study. Each item was rated on a Likert scale between 1 (strongly disagree) and 5 (strongly agree). The reliability of the resilience scale was .78. The following is a sample item in this scale: “I tend to bounce back after illness or hardship”.

Teacher Agency Scale

Regarding this variable, eight items were selected from the previous scale [32] divided into two parts. Four items related to agency beliefs and four items for agency actions. The reliability of each subscale was calculated and approved (α = .91, = .91, respectively). “Through hard work, I can solve work-related problems” is an example of the items used in this study.

Semi-structured Interview

A semi-structured interview was conducted with four EFL teachers in China regarding the interplay of teacher resilience and agency. Seven questions were asked from the respondents in the audio-recorded interview. Each interview took 90 minutes for each respondent. The interview was held in English and during the teachers’ free time. In total, 367 mins of interview data was collected and transcribed into 115,014 Chinese characters.

Data Collection and Analysis

This mixed-methods study included two phases of data collection, including a national survey in which 110 teachers participated (phase I) and a semi-structured interview with teachers in 3 universities located in different regions of the country (phase II). The participants were informed of ethical codes and their rights for anonymity, confidentiality, and freedom to withdraw at any time without consequence except that the data would be destroyed.

In phase I, all the participants were asked to complete the two questionnaires that assessed the resilience scale and agency scale. The questionnaire was transformed into an online Chinese form for data collection purposes. The reliability index and construct validity of the scales were re-examined in this study, using Cronbach’s α and the model goodness of fit indices. The collected quantitative data were then analyzed via exploratory factor, confirmatory factor, descriptive, Chi-square tests, correlation, and multiple linear regression analyses by SPSS and Amos version 25.

In addition, in phase II, the semi-structured interviews aimed to obtain the teachers’ experiences of when a factor impeded their effective exercising of resilience and agency. The interview questions examined the teachers’ impeded resilience and agency-related experiences and the factor(s) impeding them. The interviews were done with an average duration of 90 min per teacher. The collected interview data were transcribed carefully and a set of codes was provided per teacher. To ensure maxim of member checking in qualitative research, the codes were refined in light of the teachers’ explanations per data source and the emerging categories were defined. Then the extracted codes were double-checked by a second coder to estimate inter-coder reliability. After a week the second coder submitted his analysis based on which the codes were minimally revised in terms of language. Finally, an agreement index of .97 was reached. Passing these validity approval stages, three themes were finalized, as certified by another expert, who audit trialed the analyses. Overall, the themes characterized the teachers’ resilience and agency. For example, when the teachers argued that they had recovered from the adverse situation in terms of their work, it was coded under the category of ‘teacher resilience’.

The Levels of Teachers’ Resilience and Agency

In terms of the descriptive statistics, participants were convinced that they can cope with the challenges of work, as evident in the reported resilience item with the highest mean was item number one (M = 4.05). However, participants varied a little higher in their responses (SD = 0.799). This might indicate that teachers expected not so much to recover from adversities. When it came to teacher agency, the report showed a statistically significantly higher mean value (all items in this component had mean values above 3), illustrating teachers’ willingness and ability to prepare for the work. These efforts were also clearly presented in terms of the agency beliefs and actions, demonstrated in the agency actions report (the item with the highest mean was item number four, M = 4.07, SD = 0.673), although in this case, the agency beliefs showed lower scores (the item with the highest mean was item number four, M = 3.97, SD = 0.683). This shows that, when faced with the work, the teachers manifest heightened motivation of their actions by enacting their agency. The marked difference concerning teachers’ agency about the objectives and actions, and the extent to which teachers were inclined to exercise the agency. This indeed seems to be an important issue considering that teachers’ actions are the more representative and direct scale to measure the extent of enacting agency.

The first variable in the study was resilience. The respondents were asked to rate how much they agree with the given statements. The description of their answers is provided in Table 2.

Table 2

*Teachers’ Resilience*
Items	Mean	SD	Strongly Disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly Agree
RE1	4.05	.799	-	1(0.9%)	29(26.4%)	43(39.1%)	37(33.6%)
RE2	3.66	.989	2(1.8)	10(9.1)	36(32.7)	37(33.6)	25(22.7)
RE3	3.67	.889	2(1.8)	4(3.6)	43(39.1)	40(36.4)	21(19.1)
RE4	3.80	.788	1(0.9)	3(2.7)	32(29.1)	55(50	19(17.3)
RE5	3.59	.625	-	-	53(48.2)	49(44.5)	8(7.3)

As reported in Table 2, all items in this component had mean values above 3. The statement with the highest mean was “I can get through difficult times because I’ve experienced difficulty before”, and the lowest mean belonged to “It is hard for me to recover when something nervous happens”. In order to make sure that the answers are significant a series of chi-square tests were run (Table 3).

Table 3

*Chi-Square Tests: Teachers’ Resilience*
	RE1	RE2	RE3	RE4	RE5
Chi-Square	37.636^a	44.273^b	67.727^b	90.909^b	33.836^c
df	3	4	4	4	2
Asymp. Sig.	.000	.000	.000	.000	.000
a. 0 cells (0.0%) have expected frequencies less than 5. The minimum expected cell frequency is 27.5.
b. 0 cells (0.0%) have expected frequencies less than 5. The minimum expected cell frequency is 22.0.
c. 0 cells (0.0%) have expected frequencies less than 5. The minimum expected cell frequency is 36.7.

As reported in Table 3, for all five questions in this category the significance values were below the cut-off value 0.05. Therefore, it can be concluded that the answers reported in Table 2 are significant.

The second variable in the study was agency beliefs. The respondents were asked to rate how much they agree with the given statements. The description of their answers is provided in Table 4.

Table 4

*Agency Beliefs*
Items	Mean	SD	Strongly Disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly Agree
AB1	3.94	.694	1(0.9%)	1(0.9%)	21(19.1%)	68(61.8%)	19(17.3%)
AB2	3.83	.715	1(0.9)	-	33(30)	59(53.6)	17(15.5)
AB3	3.95	.675	1(0.9)	-	22(20)	68(61.8)	19(17.3)
AB4	3.97	.683	1(0.9)	-	21(19.1)	67(60.9)	21(19.1)
AB5	3.58	.806	1(0.9)	4(3.6)	50(45.5)	40(36.4)	15(13.6)

As reported in Table 4, all items in this component had mean values above 3. The statement with the highest mean was “I believe I am capable of solving the difficulties in my work”, and the lowest mean belonged to “No matter what happens at work, I believe I can deal with it”. In order to make sure that the answers are significant a series of chi-square tests were run (Table 5).

Table 5

Chi-Square Tests: Agency Beliefs
	AB1	AB2	AB3	AB4	AB5
Chi-Square	136.727^a	66.727^b	88.909^b	85.345^b	87.364^a
df	4	3	3	3	4
Asymp. Sig.	.000	.000	.000	.000	.000
a. 0 cells (0.0%) have expected frequencies less than 5. The minimum expected cell frequency is 22.0.
b. 0 cells (0.0%) have expected frequencies less than 5. The minimum expected cell frequency is 27.5.

As reported in Table 5, for all five questions in this category the significance values were below the cut-off value 0.05. Therefore, it can be concluded that the answers reported in Table 4 are significant.

The third variable in the study was agency actions. The respondents were asked to rate how much they agree with the given statements. The description of their answers is provided in Table 6.

Table 6

*Agency Actions*
Items	Mean	SD	Strongly Disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly Agree
AA1	4.03	.683	1(0.9%)	1(0.9%)	15(13.6%)	70(63.6%)	23(20.9%)
AA2	4.04	.716	1(0.9)	1(0.9)	17(15.5)	65(59.1)	26(23.6)
AA3	3.92	.756	1(0.9)	3(2.7)	21(19.1)	64(58.2)	21(19.1)
AA4	4.07	.673	1(0.9)	1(0.9)	12(10.9)	71(64.5)	25(22.7)
AA5	3.90	.677	-	3(2.7)	22(61.8)	68(61.8)	17(15.5)

As reported in Table 6, all items in this component had mean values above 3. The statement with the highest mean was “To achieve my goal, I can work hard”, and the lowest mean belonged to “I can implement ideas in my work”. In order to make sure that the answers are significant a series of chi-square tests were run (Table 7).

Table 7

*Chi-Square Tests: Agency Actions*
	AA1	AA2	AA3	AA4	AA5
Chi-Square	147.091^a	126.000^a	116.727^a	154.182^a	86.582^b
df	4	4	4	4	3
Asymp. Sig.	.000	.000	.000	.000	.000
a. 0 cells (0.0%) have expected frequencies less than 5. The minimum expected cell frequency is 22.0.
b. 0 cells (0.0%) have expected frequencies less than 5. The minimum expected cell frequency is 27.5.

As reported in Table 7, for all five questions in this category the significance values were below the cut-off value 0.05. Therefore, it can be concluded that the answers reported in Table 6 are significant.

In the interviews, teachers reported the challenging reform circumstances in China with implications for foreign language education in general and for teachers’ teaching. Teachers felt that more pressure has been placed upon them in order to implement the teaching reform and adapt the curriculum adjustment. However, the working year seems to be the mediating factor to influence the degree of exercising teacher resilience and agency. Teachers who worked longer would have stronger resilience and agency. For example, Maria whose teaching experience was less than 2 years felt very nervous and stressed when she started to teach what she did not do it before, especially at the beginning of her teaching career. Gradually, the situation showed an upward turn with the increasing teaching experience: “When I first started teaching, I would be very nervous to the absent teaching experience of this course and to the incomplete knowledge of student group. Through the continued feedback from students and accumulated experience, I’m more able to master the whole lesson and don’t feel much stressed as before”. When faced with changes in curriculum and adjustments in students, Frank, who has been working for 15 years, did not feel much pressure. Instead, based on his past teaching experience, he was able to adjust his teaching according to the differences in the new environment. He also summarized the teaching philosophy from his teaching experience: “Due to the different types of college English courses and the different student groups, students have different majors and foreign language learning requirements, expectations, and classroom participation, which affects my teaching ······ However, I now increasingly believe that teachers, as designers and leaders of the classroom, are to help students expand their knowledge and encourage them to produce as much as possible”.

All teachers indicated uncertainty in the new teaching or research environment as a consistent detrimental influence on their work regardless of the working experience. Tara, for instance, stated ‘I felt as if I was in a strange alternate universe that was unfamiliar to me when I first entered the curriculum reform. It was difficult to experience times of uncertainty and not knowing, as well as things constantly changing, which is quite difficult to process mentally.’ Largely, teachers claim that the “expert” would support their adaptation to a new environment because teachers easily felt confused about the new philosophy and could not adjust themself to the challenges. In addition, “expert” not only refers to the experts who are knowledgeable in theory but also the kind of peers who are good at practice. For example, Tara proposed the research need for theories from the experts: “When we encounter real difficulties in practice or want to do research, we need to get the insightful aspects and to broaden our horizon from the experts who are specialized in the reform theory rather than the teachers who are at the same level as us. Because the peers may fail to have the in-depth theoretical height”. Moreover, Maria mentioned the need for practice from the peers especially those who belonged to the same teaching group: “I hope there are some real classroom cases for us to guide our practice and the cases would be helpful to employ the mode, such as, heterogeneous forms for the same lesson”. Further, the “expert”, especially those who are familiar with the participants, was mentioned as a potential factor for teachers to increase their confidence in adjusting to the situation. Frank, for instance, talked about some of the support from his supervisors and community who shared the same tutors: “When starting to publish papers in core journals, I was anxious. I remembered I might sign in to the journal submission system to check the review progress daily. I will not do it because I have more confidence in my writing now. I know the paper does have some value in some aspects. This belief emerges with the increasing participation in my community. My excellent supervisor and fellow friends are conscious of how well I’m doing ”.

The Relations between Teacher Resilience and Teacher Agency

To answer the second research question and to validate the resilience questionnaire, agency belief questionnaire, & agency actions questionnaire, confirmatory factor analysis was utilized. Based on previous studies and review of the literature, resilience questionnaire (5 items), agency belief questionnaire (5 items) and agency actions questionnaire (5 items) were proposed. To acknowledge the convergent validity of the relationship between resilience questionnaire, agency belief questionnaire, & agency actions questionnaire, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was run. The initial model showed good fit to the data (see Fig. 1). Goodness-of-fit indices can be seen in Table 8.

Figure 1.

The Final Modified CFA Model with Standardized Estimates

Table 8 Evaluation of the CFA Goodness of Fit

			Threshold
Criteria		Terrible	Acceptable	Excellent	Evaluation
CMIN	271.082
DF	87
CMIN/DF	3.116	> 5	> 3	> 1	Acceptable
RMSEA	.080	> 0.08	< 0.08	< 0.06	Acceptable
GFI	.973	< 0.9	> 0.9	> 0.95	Acceptable
CFI	.974	< 0.9	> 0.9	> 0.95	Acceptable
PNFI	.684	< 0.5	> 0.5		Acceptable
TLI	.947	> 0.9	> 0.9	> 0.95	Acceptable

In Table 8, the result indicated that five determiners are ratio of CMIN-DF, goodness-of-fit index (GFI), comparative fit index (CFI), Parsimonious Normed Fit Index (PNFI), Tucker–Lewis Index (TLI), and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA). The model fit indices are all within specifications. Therefore, CMIN/DF is 3.116 (spec. ≤ 3.0), GFI = 0.973 (spec. > 0.9), CFI = .974 (spec. > 0.9), PNFI = 0.684 (spec. > 0.5), TLI = 0.947 (spec. > 0.9), and RMSEA = 0.080 (spec. < 0.080).

Table 9

*Composite Reliability and Discriminant Validity of the Factors*
	CR	AVE	MSV	MaxR(H)	Agency Actions	Resilience	Agency Beliefs
Agency Actions	0.935	0.741	0.666	0.944	0.861
Resilience	0.835	0.518	0.491	0.900	0.574	0.720
Agency Beliefs	0.932	0.734	0.666	0.946	0.816	0.701	0.856

The results of Table 9 show that composite reliabilities of the factors are acceptable (CR > 0.70). In other words, the model has achieved composite reliability. The values also demonstrate that the convergent validity of the factors reach to an acceptable value (AVE > 0.50) or the model has achieved convergent validity.

Table 10

*Relationships between the Variables*
			Estimate	S.E.	C.R.	P
Resilience	<-->	Agency Beliefs	.595	.050	4.385	.000
Agency Actions	<-->	Resilience	.471	.039	4.043	.000
Agency Actions	<-->	Agency Beliefs	.821	.053	5.400	.000

Table 10 presents teacher resilience-agency correlations. The highest significant correlation was between agency beliefs and agency actions (r = .821, p < .01), which proves the rationalization that teacher agency could be divided into agency beliefs and actions. When it came to the internal scales of agency and resilience, the relationships were the strongest, in the case of agency beliefs and resilience (r = .595, p < .01) and although moderate in the relation between agency actions and resilience (r = .471, p < .01).

Since correlation analysis cannot reveal cause-and-effect relationships, four sets of simple linear regression analyses were conducted to examine what were the cause-and-effect relationships between teacher resilience and teacher agency.

Figure 2.

The Final Measurement Model for the Relationship between Beliefs and Resilience

As shown in Fig. 2, with agency beliefs as the outcome variable, the model explained 35.5% of the variance and resilience was the significant predictor (β = .582, p < .001).

Figure 3.

The Final Measurement Model for the Relationship between Actions and Resilience

As shown in Fig. 3, with agency actions as the outcome variable, the model explained 22.1% of the variance and resilience was the significant predictor (β = .452, p < .001).

Figure 4.

The Final Measurement Model for the Relationship between Resilience, Agency Actions, and Beliefs

Conversely, as shown in Fig. 4, when resilience was the outcome variable, the model accounted for 35.5% and 22.1% of the variance respectively, with agency beliefs (β = .610, p < .001) and agency actions (β = .490, p < .001) being significant predictors. This result shows that teacher resilience and teacher agency are predictive factors of each other. Regarding the scales of teacher agency, the cause-and-effect interrelationship between agency beliefs and resilience outshone.

The qualitative findings support the quantitative results. On the one hand, some teachers may choose to enact their agency to build resilience. For example, Frank pursued to be a Ph.D. candidate to change the teaching situation where he felt burnout and frustration although he had stable work as a college English teacher: “I’ve always loved being a teacher. I started to get burnout and felt like every day was a repetition because in the course of three years, I taught the same lesson about six times a year. I would feel frustrated as I worked longer hours and would not be as engaged with my students, nor would my students be as engaged in their lessons. In addition, according to the title evaluation system, I was not able to meet new requirements at that time unless I would improve my education. I then decided to do a Ph.D. to find out what the problem was, and I was particularly interested in knowing the answer and going back to work”.

On the other hand, some teachers, despite the heavy workload, and the pressure concerning work requirements, try to be more resilient by clarifying the teacher’s identity to exert agency. They claim that their willingness to exercise resilience is due to a great extent to their commitment to the work, which is related to teachers’ identity. For example, Maria mentioned her experience to adjust the online teacher because she knew it was her duty as a teacher to accept the teaching situation and to enact her agency in the online teaching design. “I am the teacher and I need to teach no matter what situation it is. I designed more Q & A and discussion activities for the online teaching to monitor students”. Nancy believed that teachers all have the agency beliefs to pull their own weight: “Being a professional is what motivates and enables individuals to perform their teaching and research. The reason why teachers are capable of managing a significant workload is due to their professionalism and commitment to their profession”.

Strategies to Promote Resilience and Agency

Despite evidence that teacher resilience is associated with teacher agency [17, 37], little is known about how teacher resilience is related to teacher agency in the context of foreign language education. This study examined the resilience and agency of university foreign language teachers and the interrelationship between the two. The first research question concerned the levels of teacher resilience and agency. Participants were characterized by a high level of resilience and by strong agency, with little individual variation in their responses, which is in agreement with some research [8, 17] in the Chinese educational context. Whilst teachers in the quantitative are equally resilient, teachers in the qualitative study show a different degree of resilience and agency. The finding that the length of work experience has an impact on the resilience and agency of teachers is consistent with the results of research on the stresses of prospective teachers. These findings are in concordance with models on the career paths of teachers [41], which emphasizes that starting work is a challenging phase especially for novice teachers [42] because novice teachers may fail to use the available philosophy with little experience. Thus, novice teachers may need more resilience and agency to cope with the challenges and pressures in the work, such as getting more information from others.

Additionally, this study found uncertainty in the new teaching or research environment was indicated across all teachers, consistent with previous studies [43]. Moreover, teachers’ interaction with others (i.e. experts and peers) was a key aspect of whether the teachers would exercise resilience and agency, in keeping with previous research [36, 40, 44]. In the current study, the majority of participants seem to need more guidance or scaffolding in terms of the theoretical and practical level. When facing challenges, such as enacting the new curriculum, experts could possess a high level of knowledge and experience in the theoretical field and can provide valuable insights for teaching and research from the macro perspective. Peers, on the other hand, may have a similar level of expertise and can offer different perspectives and opinions for the same situation as the teachers are from the practical and micro view. Interestingly, the findings indicate that teachers could establish confidence with the support and encouragement from experts and peers, which further illustrates the social support result from colleagues to teachers’ mental health [43]. In line with that, this study clarified that social interaction with others is an important factor in maintaining resilience and promoting agency.

Strategies to Promote the Interplay between Resilience and Agency

With respect to the relationships between teacher resilience and teacher agency, the correlational analysis yielded moderate positive relationships between them. These findings were corroborated by regression analysis, which demonstrated that there was a positive predictive effect on these two terms. The results of this study appeared to support the findings [43] that the enactment of teacher agency could facilitate teachers’ resilience, indicating that teacher agency had a positive effect on teacher resilience. On the contrary, the role of teacher resilience seemed to play a vital role in encouraging teachers to exert agency. This is because teachers might assume that commitment to being resilient influences the exercising of their agency. Additionally, the correlation of agency beliefs and agency actions indicates that there are two independent related factors for teacher agency. In the current study, teachers’ agency appears to be rather mindfully enacted than practical with the higher report of teacher beliefs. The fact that teachers are altogether driven decidedly more by agency beliefs than agency actions correlate with the findings of other studies [33]. This could be due to the indicative of idealism of teachers [45].

Additionally, the present study finds that there was a collective effect among teacher resilience, teacher identity, and teacher agency, as reported in other studies [17, 19, 37, 46]. In line with that, this study clarified that the teacher identity moderated the interrelationship between teacher resilience and teacher agency. Specially, teacher’s identity appeared to have been instrumental as a mediating factor in helping them recover their sense of resilience and agency in their work. Some teachers may exercise their agency in enhancing resilience by exploring new aspects of themselves and fostering personal growth by shifting their identities. For example, by participating in doctoral research, Frank was able to relieve the burnout and frustration associated with the work to build the resilience of adapting himself to the work with the identity of being a learner. Meanwhile, some teachers may use their resilience to clarify identities to give agency. In Maria’s case, she tried to be resilient by acknowledging that it was teachers’ responsibility to adapt themselves to increased demands and thus they must exert agency in the process. Hence, it emphasizes the need for teachers to be aware of the importance of exercising resilience.

Limitations and Future Research Lines

The study is not free from weaknesses, which dictates that its findings should be taken with circumspection. In particular, the number of participants could be higher, cultural differences were not considered, no information about the teachers’ specific teaching language was included, and teacher resilience and agency were tapped at only one point in time rather than from a longitudinal perspective. In addition, other important variables were not considered even though they might play an important role in influencing teacher resilience and agency, such as age, gender, and educational background. There are also factors that might be closely related to the ability, such as teacher identity. The contribution of the latter could be particularly interesting given that readiness to speak might constitute a manifestation of the collective mechanism among teacher resilience, agency, and identity from the quantitative data. We also recognize that the complex construct of resilience was reduced to resilient behavior from the adverse or challenging situation, which precluded investigation of the role of different aspects of resilience, but this was dictated by concerns about the length of the instrument. These, and several other, issues should be heeded in future empirical investigations of teacher resilience and teacher agency, and such studies would clearly benefit from longitudinal designs, where measurements are taken at different points in time rather than only reported a posteriori.

The value of the present study lies in the fact that, to the best knowledge of the authors, it is one of the first triangulated attempts to examine the interrelationships of teacher resilience and teacher agency in EFL contexts. This study showed foreign language teachers in Chinese universities manifest a high level of resilience and agency. In addition, there was a causal relationship between the two terms, where resilience and agency tended to occur together with one causing the other respectively.

The findings of the present study have implications, especially for healthy teacher development. The transition into the new teaching or research requirements is a complex adaptation for teachers which requires high resilience and agency. Wholesome agency to survive or recover from adverse situations can contribute to the transition being resiliently successful. Meanwhile, to stay healthy as a teacher with a commitment to enact agency require the prerequisite of resilience. On the one hand, individual teachers need to increase their awareness of exercising resilience in professional development. It is necessary to create some sharing activities for teachers to learn the stories of how other teachers have overcome challenges and setbacks, and demonstrate how they cope with stress and adversity. In this way, teachers may hold the awareness of being a resilient teacher, and decrease the negative impact of anxiety or pressure in the work [39]. On the other hand, teacher educators could design and provide diverse intervention and training programs for constructing or shifting teachers’ identity, where a reflection and learning space is provided for teachers to ponder over the problems they face in teaching English [10, 41, 46]. More interaction between teachers and experts/peers is needed among programs. For example, in terms of curriculum innovation, it will be helpful to provide some theoretical directions from the experts for teachers to re-conceptualize what the curriculum conveys. It will also be efficient to organize some discussions with peers to understand how to design, and implement the lesson that teachers are teaching in practice.

Acknowledgment

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the participants for their time in completing the survey and accepting the interview.

Authors’ contributions

All authors listed in the study have materially participated in the research and article preparation. LLQ and YHH contributed to Data collection and Writing-original draft. Ali contributed to Research design and Data analysis. YSW contributed to the formatting and review of the manuscript. All have approved the final article and conducted Writing-review & editing.

Funding

The project did not receive any funding.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the first author on reasonable request.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee of human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Written informed consent was obtained from all the participants for being included in the study. The research project was authorized by the Academic and Ethics Committee of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Author details

¹School of English Education d, Guangzhou, Guangdong, P. R. China

²Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Golestan University, Gorgan, Iran

³School of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China

⁴School of English Studies, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China

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No competing interests reported.

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The Interplay between Chinese EFL Teachers’ Resilience and Agency

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Abstract

Background

Method

Results

Conclusion

Figures

Introduction

Literature Review

Teacher Resilience

Teacher Agency

Teacher Resilience and Agency

Method

Participants

Instruments

Teacher Resilience Scale

Teacher Agency Scale

Semi-structured Interview

Data Collection and Analysis

Results

The Levels of Teachers’ Resilience and Agency

The Relations between Teacher Resilience and Teacher Agency

The Final Modified CFA Model with Standardized Estimates

The Final Measurement Model for the Relationship between Beliefs and Resilience

The Final Measurement Model for the Relationship between Actions and Resilience

The Final Measurement Model for the Relationship between Resilience, Agency Actions, and Beliefs

Discussion

Strategies to Promote Resilience and Agency

Strategies to Promote the Interplay between Resilience and Agency

Limitations and Future Research Lines

Conclusion

Declarations

References

Additional Declarations

Supplementary Files

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