Teacher Resilience ESRC Seminar Series Seminar 2 Teacher Resilience: The Perspective from Occupational Health Psychology Professor Amanda Griffiths Professor Tom Cox Oxford: 16 th June 2010

Outline What is occupational health psychology? What is resilience? Have we confidence in how to measure it? Challenges to the development of ‘concepts’ Is the evidence base secure enough to justify intervention? Are our research methods ‘good enough’ to evaluate interventions?

Occupational Health Psychology Using the principles of applied psychology to the study of occupational health & well-being Individual issues – health behaviour, attitudes, personality, health, well- being, illness, treatment, rehabilitation Systems issues – training, selection, induction, appraisal, work design, management styles, organisational culture

Resilience - Definition Without an agreed & precise definition of any concept we cannot: –measure it reliably –study it scientifically –establish an adequate evidence base to justify interventions –evaluate those interventions In the case of resilience, distinguish it from other similar concepts –stress inoculation, stress resistance, hardiness, coping strategies, burnout

Methodologies Preferred methods in OHP include both qualitative & quantitative Historical emphasis in Psychology on Natural Science Paradigm And hence, on quantitative methods Tension between needs of researchers and practitioners re ‘good enough’ evidence to justify publication or intervention

Measuring Concepts– Scientism? “The traditional research paradigm…has not worked very well….It has produced very reliable results about very unimportant things….In that process, we have lost touch with some of the important phenomena that go on in organisations, or have ignored them simply because they were too difficult to study by the traditional methods available” Edgar Schein (1991)

Outcome v Process Evaluation in Applied Psychology Traditional research focusses on outcomes (measures of concepts) Need to examine process issues Need to examine reasons for no change Intentional & unintentional processes –was the analysis of original problem wrong? –was the design of intervention inappropriate? –how was intervention implemented? –did it reach the intended number of people? –what were the barriers to compliance? –what were the views of key stakeholders? Griffiths, 1999

Next Steps Move on from conceptual, descriptive, cross-sectional research to interventions Interventions in applied settings are challenging to design, implement & evaluate Evaluate process (what really happened?) and outcome (what changed? how? why?) Use qualitative (what was it like?) and quantitative (how much of it was there?) approaches Dependent on agreed definition

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