Wellbeing and Resilience among Teacher Education Students in Nauru

Abstract

The researchers wanted to understand how 22 Nauruan teacher education students responded to changing circumstances and whether or not they did anything specific to maintain their sense of resilience. The population of the Republic of Nauru is a small remote Pacific Island community of extended families, with the prioritisation of traditional family and community obligations. Most of the students access the Internet only when visiting their technology-equipped study centre, which is an allocated classroom in the secondary school. Even then technological infrastructure outages limit effective delivery. To ease these obstacles, teacher education is flexibly delivered, facilitated by two, face-to-face, support lecturers. Researchers noted that the students sensed wellbeing and resilience when their course and study habits were compatibly aligned with their family and community commitments and the students' technological, geographical and cultural contexts.