Exploring Relationships Among Resilience, Engagement, Personality, and Performance in Teacher Education

Abstract

Preservice teachers are the future of education and at the pinnacle of contemporary pedagogical practices, which could potentially influence generations of children. Investigating the relationships among preservice teachers’ resilience, engagement, personality traits, and their practicum and coursework performance is critical as it provides rich data for how preservice teachers professionally develop and succeed at the onset of their careers. Resilience, the quality of bouncing back from adversity; engagement, linked to workplace success and burnout, as well as personality, a stable trait of human behavior, are informative and measurable constructs. Self-reported grades on campus and in practicum; as well as self-evaluation on teaching confidence and preparedness are performance metrics in relation to these three psychological constructs. This study administered a five-part 39-item questionnaire to two-cohorts of 139 preservice teachers, one cohort beginning, and the other finishing their teacher education program. Descriptive statistics, factor analysis, correlation and regression analysis were completed. The results of this study indicated that engagement and two personality traits of conscientiousness and extraversion were significantly correlated and predicted four measures of performance. Although resilience was extracted as a single factor according to the BRS (Smith et al., 2008), this variable maintained no correlation to any of the four performance measures and negatively predicted self-evaluation of preparedness for teaching. Engagement was also extracted in a single factor, different from previous models using the ETS (Klassen, Yerdelen, & Durksen, 2013). Personality did not show any coherent factor structure in this study, and items were forced into respective personality factors according to previous work (Rammestedt & John, 2007). This study has important implications for teacher education and for teacher career onset and longevity.