RESILIENT SKILLS AND DYSFUNCTIONAL EFFECTS OF STRESS ON TEACHERS: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Over time, the teaching career has become a profession with a high risk of symptom development along with the category of helping professions. This article proposes a systematic review of literature on teachers with the main objective of highlighting resilient abilities, such as emotional intelligence and metacognition, and the dysfunctional effects of distress such as secondary traumatic stress and burnout syndrome. For this reason this article’s mission is to determine risk factors and protection factors on teachers through careful bibliographic analysis. The review was conducted by consulting databases such as PubMed and EBSCO by typing the keywords related to "teachers" and "secondary traumatic stress", "burnout", "emotional intelligence" and "metacognition". The bibliographic research carried out led to the detection of 3037 articles; through specific selection criteria 16 relevant articles were included, classified according to the established objectives. The review shows that implementing emotional intelligence and increasing metacognitive abilities predisposes the teacher to increase levels of self-efficacy and job satisfaction as well as to prevent potential clinical onset. This study, therefore, represents a major step forward in the understanding of risk and protection factors in the teachers category, regardless of the school level. The importance of recognising the protective factors that can be implemented through the implementation of specific intervention programmes for the teachers category is an excellent starting point for improving the school system and learning opportunities. Through these it is possible to promote their emotional well-being by mitigating the negative effect caused by their exposure to potentially stressful and/or traumatizing events.