A Study on the Perspectives of Children’s Resilience Among Nursery Teachers: Focusing on the Years of Childcare Experience

Abstract

Resilience is a concept that explains an individual's ability to adapt to stress and has recently attracted great attention as one of the non-cognitive abilities. The purpose of this study was to clarify nursery teachers' perspectives on resilience and to analyze their differences depending on their years of childcare experience. We compared 43 early-career nursery teachers and 58 veteran nursery teachers using a questionnaire survey. The results revealed that most nursery teachers are aware of fostering resilience through childcare practices. When considering conflict situations that require resilience, it is necessary to pay more attention to those in which stress is caused in young children by their teachers' behaviors. It is also necessary for nursery teachers, especially early-career ones, to understand the relationship between physical reactions and psychological conflict. In addition, it is desirable to secure opportunities to foster resilience by providing training on trouble situations for early-career teachers. This study suggests that it is important to create opportunities for veteran and early-career teachers to share their opinions on resilience, because while veteran teachers often have some better perspectives on the notion, there are some points that are more likely to be noted by early-career teachers.