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No. FirstView articles

Meaning in life and resilience among teachers

  • Maria Platsidou
  • Athena Daniilidou

Journal of Positive School Psychology , No. FirstView articles,
Published: 2021-03-26

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Abstract

Meaning in life is a significant resource in the resilience process, supporting the use of adaptive behaviors and enhancing the feeling of wellbeing. As such, it could be critical for teachers who encounter many stressors threatening their life quality and work productivity. This study aimed to investigate how teachers' levels of meaning in life relate to their resilience. Data were collected from 299 teachers using the Meaning in Life Questionnaire (assessing presence of and search for meaning) and the Multidimensional Teacher Resilience Scale (assessing protective factors related to motivational and professional, social, and emotional resilience). As predicted, presence of meaning had medium-sized positive correlations with the resilience factors, whereas search for meaning had low correlations with social resilience and professional-motivational resilience and no correlation with emotional resilience. Using K-means cluster analysis, teachers were grouped into three clusters according to their scores in the two meaning dimensions. The cluster of teachers reporting both high presence of and high search for meaning showed the highest scores on the resilience factors, followed by the cluster including teachers with high presence and low search. In conclusion, our results emphasized the important role of presence of meaning in strengthening resilient responses; also, searching for meaning, when combined with a high sense of meaning, relates to better use of the resilience protective factors and resources. As to the study implications, a meaning-centered approach to building resilience in teachers is suggested and discussed.
Keywords:
  • Meaning in life, presence of meaning, resilience, search for meaning, teachers.
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How to Cite

Platsidou, M., & Daniilidou, A. (2021). Meaning in life and resilience among teachers. Journal of Positive School Psychology , (FirstView articles). Retrieved from https://journalppw.com/index.php/JPPW/article/view/259
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Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License, which allows free sharing, copying, and adaptation of the material for any purpose, even commercially, but with providing an appropriate reference to the source. This license entitles all parties to copy, share and redistribute all the articles, data sets, figures, and supplementary files published in this journal in data mining, search engines, web sites, blogs, and other digital platforms under the condition of providing references. 

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Journal of Positive School Psychology is a peer-reviewed journal covering positive psychology and provides an international forum for the science of positive psychology in education and school settings. The JPSP, which is published two times a year, is an open-access that publishes research outcomes with significant contributions to the understanding and improvement of the positive psychology of education and services in school settings. The JPSP publishes research regarding the education of populations across the life span

Journal of Positive School Psychology is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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