A grounded theory of secondary school music teacher resilience

Teacher attrition, the phenomenon of teachers leaving the classroom, has been an ongoing challenge for schools and districts since the 1980s (Hanushek, 2007; Ingersoll, 2002; Sutcher et al., 2016). One reason why teachers leave the classroom is the experience of burnout (e.g., Bernhard, 2016; Gardner, 2010). Secondary school music teachers may be at a particular risk for burnout due to additional extracurricular expectations and pressure to maintain high performance levels (e.g., Robinson, 2010; Shaw, 2014). Developing resilience may help music teachers to persist amid challenges, reduce the risk of burnout, and support teachers’ continued engagement in the music education profession (e.g., Beltman et al., 2011; Mansfield et al., 2016). The purpose of this grounded theory was to describe the process of developing career resilience for secondary school music educators in the Mid-Atlantic United States. The research questions guiding this study were: (a) what significant experiences and relationships do participants cite that have contributed to continuing their secondary school music teaching position? (b) what activities and interactions do participants consider to be supportive of their career resilience? (c) what personal traits and contextual (teaching environment) factors support the career resilience of secondary music teachers? and (d) what benefits and challenges do participants cite related to their continued engagement as educators? Following Charmaz’ (2025) constructivist grounded theory approach, primary data sources were initial and follow-up interviews with long-time music teachers identified by reputation and snowball sampling. Concurrent with data gathering, I analyzed the interview data in an emergent, ongoing process. I used idea-by-idea open coding to identify key processes from the data. I proceeded with focused coding, arranging data into categories. In follow-up interviews, I engaged the participants in co-construction of the emerging theory, inviting them to add nuance and suggestions about what may have been missing among the emerging categories (Gibson & Hartman, 2014). The resulting theory represented the development process of secondary school music teacher resilience. Implications from this study include the importance of music teachers finding a good fit in a position that aligns with their pedagogical values, prioritizing vibrant personal lives, attending professional conferences and seeking to develop a humanizing perspective. School administrators and districts can support music teacher resilience by encouraging and funding conference attendance and establishing school cultures that support work-life boundaries and robust personal lives of teachers. Supporting music teacher resilience can make secondary school music teaching a more sustainable career and reduce the prevalence of teacher attrition.