Promoting resilience in trainee teachers

Motivation Teach SouthEast is a school-centred initial teacher training provider (SCITT). In the secondary SCITT, we currently work with 20 partner schools to provide training to 75 trainees in the South East. As the member of staff who has responsibility for pastoral care, I wanted to explore ways in which we could prepare trainees mentally for the training year and for their future teaching careers. In the academic year 2017–2018, we had a high percentage of trainees who did not complete the course (17.6 per cent). The main reasons cited were ‘mental health’ (42 per cent) and ‘personal circumstances’ (33 per cent). This led to a review of our pastoral care and the introduction of strategies to support trainees to successfully complete the course despite personal difficulties. Approach After analysis of research into the management of stress (Kobasa and Puccetti’s ‘hardy personality’ (1979), Rotter’s ‘locus of control’ (April et al., 2012) and studies such as