Fostering Resilience in Teacher Education (FoResT)

Building Resilience in Future Teachers

In today’s dynamic education system, teachers need more than just subject-specific knowledge; they also require cross-disciplinary skills, including crucial socio-emotional abilities like resilience. Resilience is a key competency that enables teachers to adapt effectively to challenges and changes within their profession. Resilient teachers are better prepared to handle difficult situations and are less likely to leave the teaching field.

Although the importance of resilience in teaching is widely acknowledged, there remains limited understanding of effective strategies to nurture this skill. Digital learning environments designed with media pedagogical and media didactic principles provide promising opportunities. These platforms offer flexible, personalized, and interactive learning experiences where teachers can safely explore and reflect on resilience strategies.

By integrating resilience development with media-didactic design, we aim to create an online learning platform that is both content-rich and methodologically tailored to the specific needs of future educators.

Goals

In our project, we are guided by three goals:

  1. Development of an Interactive Learning Platform to Foster Resilience Among (Prospective) Primary School Teachers in German-Speaking Regions​;
  2. Implementation and Evaluation of the Effectiveness of the Interactive Learning Platform Based on the Competence Development of Students at PHBern and In-Service Teachers​;
  3. Linking Practice-Oriented Learning Environments with Empirical Research on Resilience Promotion​.

Research questions

Using a mixed-methods approach that incorporates quantitative, qualitative, and intervention data, we aim to investigate a range of research questions. Our primary focus centers on two key questions:

  1. How does FoResT affect resilience and exhaustion in prospective teachers?

  2. How do participants evaluate the resilience-building program FoResT?​

Research design

Grafik Forschungsdesign
Since the 2023/24 academic year, approximately 250 students from PH Bern participate annually in the FoResT platform as part of their regular course within the primary school teacher education program.

  • Course Enrollment
    • Students independently choose to take the course in either the fall or spring semester. This voluntary choice results in an approximately equal split between a control group and an experimental group.

  • Testing Schedule
    • All participants take the initial pre-test simultaneously.
    • The experimental group then begins the course immediately.
    • The control group waits until the following semester to start the course.

  • Course Process
    During the course, students alternate regularly between:
    • seminar sessions focusing on course topics;
    • independent work on six FoResT platform modules during their free time.

  • Post-Testing
    • After completing the course modules, participants take a post-test to assess learning outcomes.

  • Follow-Up
    • Ten weeks later, a follow-up test is conducted for the experimental group. This test also serves as the pre-test for the control group before they begin their course.

  • Qualitative Data Collection
    • Participants complete an open-ended survey to provide qualitative insights regarding their educational and metacognitive outcomes, as well as their experience using the FoResT platform.

Results

Currently, the empirical data collected during the project are being processed and cannot be made publicly available. This section will be updated as the project results are published.