Conceptual Foundations for Developing Professional Resilience in Pre-Service Teachers

Teacher resilience has become a central concern of teacher education research, yet most work addresses in-service teachers and treats resilience as a quality to be sustained rather than deliberately developed during initial preparation. This conceptual article synthesises psychological and educational literature in order to substantiate the conceptual foundations for developing professional resilience in pre-service teachers. Using theoretical analysis, comparison and conceptual modelling, the article (a) clarifies the notion of professional resilience of a pre-service teacher as a developable, context-dependent integrative capacity; (b) identifies the theoretical sources on which its development can be grounded; (c) proposes a five-component structure (motivational-value, cognitive, emotional-volitional, social-communicative and reflexive-regulatory); and (d) formulates the principles and pedagogical conditions that make its development possible within teacher education programmes. The proposed framework is theoretical and requires empirical validation; its intended contribution is to offer teacher educators a coherent basis for designing resilience-oriented preparation.