In my presentation, I will present the relationship between resiliency and reactance of pedagogy students  and their styles of coping with stress. Reactance is a category derived from social psychology. It is a phenomenon that is usually considered in two aspects: state and trait. Both approaches have their supporters. The classical theory of psychological reactance is considered to be the proposal developed by Jacek Brehm in 1966. It presents the phenomenon of psychological resistance and its consequences. Reactance is a motivational state that appears in a situation of restriction or threat to freedom, directing the individual's actions to regain lost freedom or to strengthen it in a situation of threat (Rudnicki, 2009, p. 134). Based on their research, Brehm (1966) and Brehm and Brehm (1981) found that people differ in their level of reactance. It can therefore be interpreted as a stable personality characteristic. However, the results of many studies indicate that the perception of reactance as a trait is only one of many aspects of the reactance concept (Sittenthaler et al., 2015). 

Resilience is also a complex psychological category. Based on the literature on the subject, two terms can be distinguished to describe resilience. These are resilience and resiliency. The first refers to resilience understood as a process, while the second - as a permanent resource of an individual. The meaning of resilience that is closer to me refers to the understanding of resilience as a relatively permanent trait, ego-resiliency as Block and Block (1980) would define it.

Studies also show a relationship between reactance and resiliency and styles or ways of coping with stress (Palmentera, 1996). Resilience positively correlates with, among others, adaptive strategies for coping with stress, measured using the Mini-COPE questionnaire (Ogińska-Bulik, Juczyński, 2008). 

The significance of this research is based on the recognition the level of resiliency, reactance and ways of coping with stress in students of pedagogy. The profession of a teacher is particularly exposed to the unpredictability of everyday situations, including the occurrence of traumatic situations (Kwiatkowski, 2018). The ability to cope with such situations is crucial for the work of a teacher, who, as research shows, is an overworked, stressed and burnt out person. This is due to the growing social expectations towards the teaching profession (testomania, school rankings) (Czerepaniak-Walczak, 2018), bureaucracy, and growing mental health problems among children and adolescents (increased incidence of depression, suicide attempts) (Kiciński and Palma, 2022).

The research objectives are exploratory and explanatory. The main objective of the presented research project is to identify the relationship between reactance and resiliency and the ways of coping with stress among students of pedagogy.

The subject of the research project is the relationship between the level of reactance, the intensity of resiliency and the ways of coping with stress among pedagogy students. The following research questions were formulated: 1. What is the relationship between the level of reactance and the ways of coping with stress of students of pedagogical fields? 2. What is the relationship between the intensity of resiliency and coping with stress of students of pedagogical fields? 3. How do reactance and resiliency of students of pedagogical fields modify the styles of coping with stress they use? For these questions the following hypotheses were formulated: H1: Pedagogy students with a higher level of reactance are more likely to use strategies focused on problem-solving and positive thinking compared to those with a lower level of reactance who use strategies focused on avoidance or seeking social support. H2: Pedagogy students with a high level of resiliency use stress coping strategies focused on problem-solving and positive thinking compared to people with a lower resilience potential who use strategies focused on avoidance or seeking social support. H3: Pedagogy students with high levels of reactance and resiliency are more likely to use strategies focused on problem-solving and positive thinking compared to students with low levels of resilience and reactance. The research group consisted of 182 students of pedagogy. The study was conducted using online questionnaires. The questionnaire study was carried out in a quantitative approach. The method used in the research project was a questionnaire study. Three standardized research tools were used. These include: Therapeutic Reactance Scale - TRS (Rudnicki, 2009), Resilience Measurement Scale - SPP-25 (Ogińska-Bulik and Juczyński, 2008) and the Stress Coping Inventory - Mini-COPE (Juczyński and Ogińska-Bulik, 2012).

The results show that the students of pedagogy participating in the study are not a uniform group in terms of the level of reactance, the intensity of resilience, and the methods of coping with stress used. • The majority of the students studied, both women and men, demonstrate an average level of reactance. There were also no differences between female and male students in terms of the level of reactance. • There is a statistically significant difference between the level of reactance characteristic of the studied group of pedagogy students and the strategy focused on Problem-solving. • Older students are characterized by a higher intensity of resilience than younger ones. • Active Coping, Planning, Positive Reappraisal, Acceptance, Sense of Humor, Seeking Emotional Support are methods more often used by students characterized by a higher intensity of resilience.

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