Mapping Resilience

This collaborative self-study examines how three doctoral students and veteran educators, all serving in leadership roles during and after the pandemic, experienced resilience, adaptability, and professional identity reconstruction. Grounded in Dewey’s (1938) theory of experience and Schön’s (1983) reflective practice, the study conceptualizes instability as an opportunity for growth. Meeting consistently over several years, the three educators identified a specific public space that functioned as their place to meet (LaBoskey, 2004), offering mutual support, critique, accountability, and care while navigating doctoral work, leadership responsibilities, community obligations, and family crises. Using collaborative self-study methodology, data sources included journals, emails, notes, and reflective conversations. Findings revealed three themes: resilience through relationship, redefinition of professional purpose, and embracing uncertainty as learning. The educators reframed pandemic-era challenges as opportunities for reinvention, understanding resilience as relational adaptability supported by reflective community, rather than individual endurance. Critical friendship established a trusted relationship that allowed us to challenge each other's perspectives and teaching methods, resulting in growth and transformation (Grant & Kastberg, 2023). Drawing on Kitchen et al.’s (2025) conception of knowledge as provisional, the study positions self-study as a process of continuous mapping. This work contributes to S-STEP scholarship by demonstrating how collaborative reflective inquiry sustains educator agency, identity, and renewal amid ongoing educational and societal change.