Background Concerns about teacher stress, burnout, and attrition have led to increased international attention to teacher resilience in education research. This study investigates how teachers in Malaysia, Japan, Nigeria, Uganda, and Vietnam support resilience through their perceptions of teacher professional identity (TPI). Methods Comparative discourse analysis based on quantitative ethnography (QE) and epistemic network analysis (ENA) was used to identify cross-cultural discourse patterns and thematically evaluate teacher utterances related to stress, coping methods, support systems, and notions of resilience. Results The findings demonstrate that resilience is not only developed as an individual skill, but also through culturally and socially rooted understandings of TPI. Teachers from Japan and Vietnam focused on systemic navigation and emotional regulation, while teachers from Nigeria and Uganda focused on spirituality and moral leadership. Malaysian instructors have a mixed approach that blends strategic adaptation and community-centric principles. Conclusions The study highlights the need for contextually relevant and localized methods of professional development that are sensitive to teachers’ identities and contextual realities.
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Asakura et al. (2026) studied this question.