Beyond Perseverance: Developing Academic Resilience for a Better Normal

Abstract

This chapter shares the challenges that scholars experienced during the pandemic and their responses to them. We find that participants responded to complex work and home challenges through ethics of grit and perseverance. Offering a caution against grit mindsets, we argue that academics would benefit from opportunities to develop fuller forms of resilience. To do so, we recommend that higher education institutions co-construct locally and culturally relevant conceptualisations of resilience and enact trauma-informed practice to better support academic resilience in their faculties.

Citation

Goel, P., Jay de los Reyes, E., Chung, G.Y., Zulfiqar, A., Mahat, M., Cohrssen, C., Blannin, J. and Villafranca, E. (2024), "Beyond Perseverance: Developing Academic Resilience for a Better Normal", Goel, P., Simmons, J., Marwah, S., Andersson, L., Neuhaus, S. and Mahat, M. (Ed.) Building a Better Normal (Great Debates in Higher Education), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 159-184. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80455-410-420241009