The Association between Socio-demographic Factors and the Six Protective Factors that Foster Resilience among Tanzania Primary Schools Teachers

Abstract

Stress has been counted as a major problem for many teachers; something led some of them to have ineffective job performance within teaching profession. This study designed to examine the association between socio-demographic factors and the six protective factors that foster resilience among Tanzania primary schools teachers. And it was guided by a research question which stated that how have socio-demographic factors associated with six protective factors that foster resilience among Tanzania primary schools teachers? A total numbers of participants who filled and completed questionnaires were six hundred sixty two. The questionnaire had 36 items measuring six protective factors strongly associated with resiliency within teachers. And it was a Likert Scale ranged from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The six protective factors are such as purpose & expectations (PE), nurture & support (NS), positive connections (PC), meaningful participation (MP), life guiding skills (LGS), and clear & consistent boundaries (CCB). Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was applied since we wanted to confirm the usability of scale items to Tanzania primary schools teachers. Basic descriptive statistics such as frequency, percent mean and standard deviation were calculated and used to describe the sample and the characteristics of the respondents. And since resilience of every domain was continuous variables multiple linear regression analysis was performed to determine association of resilience of every domain. The results of this study show that to a large extent these six protective factors have a great contribution in promoting resilience to primary schools teachers in Tanzania. The factors have been different in developing the level of resilience for the respective teachers according to the environment in which the teachers work in, something leads to different responses for each socio-demographic factors used in this study.