Experiences of Resilient Military Veterans Transitioned to Education: A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Study

The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to understand the lived experiences leading to high resilience in military veteran teachers employed in education roles in an international setting. The central research question of this study is: What are the resilience-building experiences of military veteran teachers? Deci and Ryan’s self-determination theory guided the study of veteran resilience, exploring the roles of competence, choice, and connection related to authentic learning, performance, and resilience. This study makes use of rich data collected from in-depth and multiple individual and focus-group interviews as well as a letter-writing prompt to generate themes, develop textural and structural data, and report the essence of high performance and resilience in the lives of a purposeful and representative sample of 10 military veteran teachers with a combined total of over 280 years of honorable and exemplary service to the nation. Hermeneutic reflexive data analysis procedures informed by Saldana and other researchers' discussions of the qualitative approach led to a greater understanding of resilience-building experience, yielding the four themes of networking relationships, development training, decision-making, and adversity experience. Implications for education policy and professional teaching practice call for greater investment and devotion to building student resilience that may result in performance improvement and higher levels of individual readiness and well-being.