Analyzing How Relationships, Determination, Dedication, and Gratitude Affect Teacher Resilience in Top-Tier Competitive Secondary Schools in Thailand

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to determine which components influenced a Thai secondary-school teacher’s resilience. From the literature review, 48 questionnaire items were initially evaluated by using both an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and the input from three experts. Subsequently, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and goodness-of-fit analysis were used on the remaining 28 item questionnaire. The questionnaire was divided into two parts, with Part 1 concerned with items about each teacher’s personal characteristics. Part 2 made use of a 5-level opinion scale to determine each teacher’s opinion about the five main constructs. Stratified random sampling was used to obtain the EFA sample size of 336 and 196 for the CFA. The correlation coefficients between variables were examined using the Kaiser-Meter-Olkin (KMO) test and Bartlett's test of sphericity. The components included relationships, gratitude, dedication, determination, and their effect on teacher resilience. When ranked in importance, relationships were judged most important, followed by determination, dedication, and gratitude. The study is novel in that it is only one in a handful of studies which have investigated the importance of teacher gratitude and its importance on teacher work resilience.