Reclaiming ‘resilience’: viewing educational professional resilience through the lens of neurodiversity.
The education system in the UK expects that education professionals will do what they can to manage the many demands of teaching, the onus is on the teacher to put ‘coping’ strategies in place, to exert resilience. All teachers feel the burden of resilience, but neurodivergent teachers must also manage the additional load of working within an education system that is wedded to neuronormative practices.
Teacher resilience is something that has been written about by education scholars for some time now, however you might also be interested to know that there is a growing body of research which specifically looks at the resilience of neurodivergent teachers. Most notably, the research by Burns and Bell (2011), and Burns, Poikkeus and Aro (2013), who found that neurodivergent teachers mastered their personal strengths and transferred these into resilient strategies in order to manage the everyday demands of teaching. This cultivating of strengths into resilience required the neurodivergent teachers to sacrifice their downtime, leading to the teachers feeling overwhelmed.
In my own research, I argue that neurodivergent teachers adopt greater resilience in the form of strategies to try and live up to the ‘cult’ ideal of a teaching professional, an ideal that does not bear any resemblance to reality, but is a fictional character borne out of Ofsted criteria, and performative education policy.
Before I move on, this would be a good point to bring in a couple of nouns and verbs, from the Oxford Thesaurus 4th Edition (2012) definition of the word ‘resilient’, to be resilient is described as someone who is “quick to recover”, someone who is “strong”. In addition, verbs associated with the word ‘cope’ are to “stand up to”, to “manage”, and to “look after oneself”. If we are to take the meanings of each word literally, then resilience is not meant to be a lifetime experience, nor is it something that is meant to feel like it is ‘put upon’ an individual, there is autonomy and ownership in standing up for oneself and looking after oneself. What we should be doing then as neurodivergent educational professionals is reclaiming resilience for ourselves, we can do this by adopting more of a social ecological approach to resilience.
“...resilience is not meant to be a lifetime experience, nor is it something that is meant to feel like it is ‘put upon’ an individual, there is autonomy and ownership in standing up for oneself and looking after oneself.”
At the social level, the individual’s needs in terms of the practical tools and resources they might require to do the job are made available, and the self-care and wellbeing of the individual themselves is also considered. The ecological (environment) level looks at what the employer can do to accommodate the individual, an example of this would be for the employer to ensure the working environment is neuroinclusive in both policy and practice throughout institution.
So, what does reclaiming resilience look like, and how can we as a neurodivergent education professional benefit from this approach:
By being unapologetically neurodivergent (dyslexic, autistic, whatever way you like to identify, just don’t apologise for it, by changing who you are!)– for example, you could send an email to your manager stating how you like to receive information, if you prefer to receive instructions in clear bullet points, or table form, inform your manager of your preference.
By not confusing reasonable adjustments with resilience strategies, the former requires the employer to take on the responsibility to action the adjustments and to remove barriers, the latter puts the onus on you to put strategies in place to surmount obstacles.
By considering your psychological wellbeing make sure you take time out at the weekend and during the holidays, do not overcommit for example by agreeing to run revision workshops in your time.
By being your own advocate, ensure that you are familiar with the Equality Act 2010, and in particular the general duty of the Public Sector Equality Duty, this is a legal obligation for your employer to adhere to. Familiarise yourself with your school or colleges EDI policy, and all other policies which could assist you. In addition, seek out support from charities, support groups to assist you if you are unsure about what RAs to ask for.
By not settling for ‘one size fits all’ reasonable adjustments, adjustments should be specific to you as an individual.
By finding out about the Access to Work scheme, yes, it is a laborious process, but do not let that put you off. The AtW scheme is additional to RAs and can include support like coaching to better understand your neurodivergence and develop your strengths.
The above points are not a definitive list they have been put together to get you thinking about how you can “stand up to” the demands of working in education, without losing yourself, without going under, without feeling like it is necessary for you to “cope”. By reclaiming resilience for yourself you can change the narrative of resilience from a “sink or swim” to one which empowers you to work in a way that works for you and ensures that you are able to stay in the profession you love.
References:
Burns, E., and Bell, S. (2011) Narrative construction of professional teacher identity of teachers with dyslexia. Teacher and Teacher Education, 27, pp. 952-960.
Burns, E., Poikkeus, A., and Aro, M. (2013) Resilience strategies employed by teachers with dyslexia working at tertiary education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 34, pp. 77-85.
Waite, M. ed. (2012) Oxford Paperback Thesaurus. 4th Edition. Great Britain: Clays Ltd.
