Communicatively constructing resilience in public education organizations: Invoking a bigger purpose and growth mindset messaging

This study explores how organizational members draw on discursive resources to enact resilience when navigating challenges in a public education institution. Drawing on qualitative interview data from educators, findings reveal that resilience is a dynamic, socially constructed, collective process that emerges through (1) invoking a bigger purpose, where challenges are discursively framed as inherent in meaningful work, and (2) growth mindset messaging, where learning is foregrounded through storytelling. Taken together, these communicative practices make up a recursive process—with drawing on past experiences of successfully overcoming adversity and discursive framing—to co-construct individual and collective resilience in the organizational context of public education. Our findings extend the literature on meaningful work, growth mindsets, and the Communication Theory of Resilience. We offer practical implications for (1) cultivating growth mindset messaging and (2) building narratives anchored in a bigger purpose to foster a collective identity.