Clare Maas
2017-01-02
This article presents the concept of “teacher immunity”, which is built up by handling the difficulties of the teaching profession and can help protect individual teachers against negative effects of stress and burnout. Hiver and Dörnyei draw on insights from biology and psychology to ground the new concept in existing theory, explaining how maladaptive strategies for dealing with stress can develop, and how they can be reversed in a three-step approach.
Article:
Hiver, P. & Z. Dörnyei (2015), Language Teacher Immunity: A Double-Edged Sword. Applied Linguistics, 1-20. Available here.
Empirical Study:
350 South Korean teachers of English (K-12) in state sector Data from focus groups (N= 44), surveys (N= 293), and in-depth interviews (N= 18)
\= validation study to establish robust empirical foundation for new construct
Immunity:
This concept of 'immunity' is said to allow teachers to maintain high levels of energy and effectiveness over their careers to avoid burnout. Hiver & Dörnyei use the term to mean a mechanism which makes teachers more resilient to the impacts of working in a stressful environment, especially with high demands but little support.
Teacher resilience is defined as using all the resources available in a productive way to achieve learning success with the students in the face of adversity and detrimental conditions.
Comparable to biological immunity to disease, they explain that teachers acquire immunity towards the stresses of the job due to repeated exposure to difficult situations, and by developing effective coping strategies based on these experiences. The emergence of teacher immunity is said to undergo four key phases:
- triggering; a destabilising event that leads to a readiness/necessity to develop,
- linking specific behaviours to specific triggers where they have shown to be helpful,
- realignment; a sense of regaining control over teaching situation,
- stabilization; confirming linked behaviours as part of professional identity; becoming immune.
Maladaptive Immunity:
Just as children are more lilely to become ill due to a lack of immunity against disease, insufficiently developed immunity may explain why younger teachers and those with less experience are more likely to suffer from burnout and leave the teaching profession. However, the authors also emphasise that ‘maladaptive immunity’, where an experienced teacher has acquired unhelpful coping strategies, can have an equally negative impact.
...while immunity is an indispensable defense shield, the potential danger exists for it to become overprotective and lead to rigidity and conservatism, thereby inhibiting change and growth.
On the surface, the teacher may appear to be managing the difficulties of teaching, but counterproductive coping strategies can manifest in an unhelpful defense mechanism making them too rigid and not open to change or further professional development, leading to symptoms such as callousness and apathy.
How to get it right:
Understanding this concept enables us to propose ways in which the acquisition of positive immunity can be supported, for example in training new teachers or helping experienced teachers to refresh their resilience. At the end of their article, Hiver & Dörnyei thus suggest three steps through which immunity that has developed to be counterproductive can be “rebooted”. They highlight the importance of not 'forcing' change on teachers, but encouraging self-organised development by making more appropriate coping strategies attractive to the teacher in question. Their suggested steps are:
- raising awareness of the potentially counterproductive coping strategies, e.g. through in-service seminars, mentoring, or teacher development courses.
- familiarizing teachers with helpful coping strategies, such as proactive approaches, staying objective, asking for help, evaluating a repertoire of solutions, finding a creative vent for negative energy.
- encouraging the (re-)formation of appropriate life narratives which constructively build in challenging experiences and success stories, to stabilize the transformation of the coping behaviours.
Discussion:
Have you been in a similar situation or do you know a colleague who has developed maladaptive immunity? What are your concrete strategies for helping?