Using the first year curriculum to develop preservice teacher resilience and self-efficacy

Abstract

This paper reports on measures to develop preservice teachers' well-being, in particular their self-efficacy, resilience and coping skills , by embedding these into a core first semester, first year course in a preservice teacher education program. These factors have been shown as vital for ongoing engagement in studies and retention of tertiary students as well as the retention of teachers in the workforce, in particular the beginning teacher in their first year out. The design of the course draws upon and extends the work of Donnison, Oprescu, and Penn-Edwards (2013) who argued for the addition of soft outcomes as well as the more traditional academic hard outcomes in first year courses "in order to foster students' holistic well-being and support transition"(p. 1) into tertiary studies.