offered a podium presentation (variation) 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology 2019

Teachers' Sense Of Meaning And Graduates' Resilience: A Study Of Arab Vocational Schools (#244)

Wesam Ayuob 1 , Shiri Lavy 1
  1. University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

Adolescents coming from a lower class often experience distress in their personal life as well as at school.  Moreover, their ability to overcome such difficulties and pave their path to a higher class depends, to a certain extent, on their ability to develop resilience despite their disadvantaged background.  Acknowledging the critical contribution of teachers to students' development, in the present study we focused on teachers' as agents who may influence graduates' resilience, and on a resource that may enable them to do that in difficult conditions- their sense of meaning at work. We further suggested that teacher-student relationships are the underlying mechanism through which teachers’ work meaningfulness impacts students. The study comprised 436 teachers and 421 graduates from 30 Arab vocational schools (comprising mainly lower class students), who completed questionnaires assessing the research variables. Analyses indicated a significant contribution of teachers' sense of meaning and of graduates' perceptions of their relationships with the teachers, to graduates' resilience. Additional analyses focusing on teachers revealed a significant association of teachers' sense of meaning with their performance, which was mediated by teachers’ caring for their students and their relationships with them. Practical and theoretical implications for education of lower-class students will be discussed.