The Relationship Between Hope And Goal Achievement

How Do Self-Esteem, Dispositional Hope, Crisis Self-Efficacy, Mattering, and Gender Differences Affect Teacher Resilience during COVID-19 School Closures?

(1) Background: The closure of schools and the transition to online teaching because of the COVID-19 pandemic's restrictions have resulted in significant changes in the workplace. Consequently, several resilience strategies have been implemented, and chief among them focus on the topic of burnout and coping abilities; (2) Purpose: Thus, this study investigates the influence of self-esteem, dispositional hope, and mattering on teacher resilience, and how crisis self-efficacy and gender differences mediate and moderate the relationships among associated variables. (3) Methods: This is a cross-sectional study with a cluster random sampling. A total of 248 secondary school teachers in Malaysia participated in this study. Questions were first transferred and formatted using a template of a commercial internet survey provider. Then, the university's online learning platform was used both as a questionnaire distribution channel and a data collection method. Data analysis was conducted using structural equation modeling (SEM) with a partial least squares method; (4) Results: The findings of this study revealed that self-esteem, dispositional hope, and mattering significantly influence teacher resilience, and crisis self-efficacy mediates the impact of self-esteem and dispositional hope on teacher resilience. In some instances, the results also showed that gender has a moderating effect on teacher resilience during the pandemic; (5) Conclusions: This study used psychological factors to understand teacher resilience and incorporated crisis self-efficacy into teacher resilience research. It is one of the very few studies in resilience literature to investigate the moderating role of gender on teacher resilience.

Hope and Resilience During a Pandemic Among Three Cultural Groups in Israel: The Second Wave of Covid-19

The aim of this study was to explore the coping resources of hope and sense of coherence, which are rooted in positive-psychology theory, as potential resilience factors that might reduce the emotional distress experienced by adults from three cultural groups in Israel during the chronic-stress situation of a pandemic. The three cultural groups examined were secular Jews, Ultra-Orthodox Jews, and Arabs. We compared these cultural groups during the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, just before the Jewish New Year (mid-September 2020) as a second lockdown was announced. Data were gathered from 248 secular Jews, 243 Ultra-Orthodox Jews, and 203 Arabs, who were 18-70 years old (M = 37.14, SD = 12.62). The participants filled out self-reported questionnaires including the Brief Symptom Inventory as a measure of emotional/psychological distress (i.e., somatization, depression, and anxiety) and questionnaires about sense of coherence and different types of hope (i.e., intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal) as measures of coping resources and resiliency. Differences were found between the three groups in terms of several variables. The Arab participants reported the highest levels of emotional distress and the lowest levels of interpersonal and transpersonal hope; whereas the Ultra-Orthodox participants revealed the highest levels of sense of coherence and other resilience factors. A structural equation model revealed that, in addition to the sociodemographic factors, only sense of coherence and intrapersonal hope played significant roles in explaining emotional distress, explaining 60% of the reported distress among secular Jews, 41% among Ultra-Orthodox Jews, and 48% among Arabs. We discuss our findings in light of the salutogenic and hope theories. We will also discuss their relevancy to meaning-seeking and self-transcendence theory in the three cultural groups.

Does Dispositional Mindfulness Predict the Development of Grit?

Abstract. Grit, that is, perseverance and passion for long-term goals, is a novel construct that has gained attention in recent years ( Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007 ). To date, little research has been performed with the goal of identifying the antecedents of grit. Thus, in order to fill this gap in the literature, self-report data were collected to examine whether mindfulness, a mindset of being-in-the-present in a nonjudgmental way, plays a role in fostering grittiness. Three hundred and forty-three undergraduate students completed an online survey once in a cross-sectional study, and of these, 74 students completed the survey again 4.5 months later. Although the cross-sectional analyses identified a number of positive associations between mindfulness and grit, the longitudinal analysis revealed that the mindfulness facets of acting with awareness and non-judging were the most important positive predictors of grit 4.5 months later. This set of findings offers implications for future grit interventions.