Abstract:

Helping professions such as school psychology are characterized by high-stress levels with a risk of professional burnout. The work demands on school psychologists in today's schools can be particularly stressful, and resilience is increasingly needed to maintain adequate and sustainable staffing levels. School psychologists' resilience also contributes to an overall school resilience culture linked to positive educational outcomes. The research aimed to map different aspects of resilience in Slovak school psychologists, focusing on those that are at a significantly lower level than novice psychologists. The research sample consisted of 118 school psychologists employed in primary and secondary schools who, after being approached by email, completed a research battery containing the Resilience Factors Inventory (Reivich & Shatte, 2002), an adapted Emotional Flexibility Scale (Fu et al., 2017), and an abbreviated form of the Big Five Factor Inventory (Soto & John, 2017). Of the Big Five personality factors, conscientiousness and openness to experience emerged as significant predictors of school psychologists' resilience. School psychologists were also found to have a positive moderate relationship of resilience with emotional flexibility. Novice school psychologists were found to have lower levels of resilience: optimism, self-efficacy, and outreach compared to more experienced school psychologists. These factors, as well as openness, conscientiousness, and emotional flexibility, should be cultivated in undergraduate training to achieve greater resilience in school psychologists entering practice. Future work is recommended to develop and validate resilience-building practices, specifically targeting these traits and competencies to incorporate them into the undergraduate training of school psychologists.

Keywords:

Resilience, school psychology, emotional flexibility, personality factors, Big Five, psychological resilience, resilience building.