Pathways to Wellbeing: Reconceptualizing Resilience to Foreground Marginalized Teachers' Agentic Resistance

This study reconceptualizes resilience by centering marginalized teachers' agentic resistance as a critical pathway to wellbeing. Using critical qualitative inquiry, we conducted in-depth interviews with 17 U.S. teachers who identified with marginalized racial, gender, and/or sexual identities to explore how they resist structural oppression and sustain their professional and personal identities. Findings revealed that resistance emerged in various ways, including inclusive curriculum design, confrontation with colleagues or administrators, embodied identity expression, and support drawn from contexts and resources for resistance. These resources included social movements and ancestors' legacies, demonstrating that resistance is not merely individual coping but a collective, identity-affirming practice. We argue that resilience must be reframed to include intentional and proactive resistance, which enables marginalized teachers to challenge oppressive school structures, promote educational equity, and sustain their own flourishing. This study offers a critical framework that shifts resilience from passive endurance to politically engaged practice, emphasizing the need for institutional supports that empower marginalized teachers to resist, persist, and thrive in inequitable educational systems.