Resilience, daily spiritual experience and self-efficacy of the university teachers: Differentiation according to postgraduate training

Abstract

The required training of university teachers has been increasingly affected by changes in world politics, a product of globalization that is giving new profiles to the world of work. This study analyzes the differential perceptions of resilience, daily spiritual experience and self-efficacy of Brazilian university lecturers based on postgraduate academic training. For this reason, a quantitative and cross-sectional study is presented with the participation of 189 lecturers from a private university in the northeast of Brazil. The representations of the participants were evaluated from the answers given to the scales of resilience, daily spiritual experience and self-efficacy of the university lecturers, depending on the postgraduate training. An analysis of the differences based on graduate training suggests that graduate lecturers perceive themselves to be more resilient than their non-doctoral and doctoral peers; that non-doctoral university professors perceive a greater acceptance of life than doctorates; there was no significant differentiation in everyday spiritual experience; Postdoctoral university professors stand out for feeling greater self-efficacy in relation to didactic strategies for lesson planning, didactic strategies to actively involve students, and didactic strategies to promote interaction in the classroom. It is concluded that postgraduate training influences the representations of university professors about the way in which they face the adversities of daily work and how they evaluate their teaching self-efficacy. It follows that the promotion of postgraduate training of university professors is of utmost importance, specifically at the postdoctoral level, since this variable can become a determining factor in the quality of the service provided by the university.