Violence in urban schools is a major concern for many countries of the world. In school context, types of violence generally gather intimidation, threats, direct aggression against a teacher or its personal property as well as acts of violence between students witnessed by teachers. According to Georgescu (2007), Romania is at the first rank of 37 European countries for violence encountered by teachers. In Quebec, a survey of 200 secondary schools showed that 90% of teachers suffered at least one incident of verbal violence from a student, 34% reporting an incident of physical violence, 35% an incident against their property and 47% an incident of sexual character (Jeffrey, 2007). Teacher’s burnout is also a plague affecting them internationally and student’s behaviour is found to be the first cause of stress (Yu, 2005). Research on deleterious effects of violence on school staff has been directed on its most extreme forms, in spite of the fact that ordinary violence hinders teachers functioning and student learning (Feder et al. 2007; Martin et al. 2004). Research has found that teachers are most frequently affected by less spectacular violence inside the classroom, where a large proportion of violent incidents occur (Houle & Rondeau, 2002). Teaching can become draining, particularly at the secondary level (Otero-Lopez et al. 2009). A spill over effect can be inflicting disquiet upon others of the school community, conducting vulnerable teachers to emotional fatigue, low efficacy and disengagement.   

However, an alternative hypothesis from the resilience paradigm was chosen to examine the positive aspects of work in adverse situations (Théorêt,2005). Educational resilience is defined as the capacity of the ecological school network, to engineer positive interrelations prone to get people to deal effectively with negative or traumatic events. In this perspective, we look on the other side of the proposition of the effects of ordinary violence on teachers. Relying on previous work, we try to understand how teachers aptly confront adversity (Théorêt et al. 2006). This trend of research on teacher’s work seeks to document the process of educational resilience,  considered a multidimensional and complex process, ‘‘a dynamic within a social system of interrelationships’’ (Gu & Day, 2007, p. 1305).  In experiencing direct and indirect violence, teachers may suffer from repetitive incidents and become burned out. But other teachers, far from being drenched, bounce back and develop their professional competencies when confronted with hardships. Our research question here concerns which resources of the system allow for he development of teacher’s resilience in view of school’s violence, as a fundamental condition of urban teaching and occupational wellbeing. We chose to investigate the question from two national viewpoints, to verify further the validity of the process of educational resilience, as it can spurt from different cultural backgrounds.

Our first objective was to describe how experienced secondary teachers from two states, one east-European, the other north-American, perceived the impact of violence on their teaching. The second objective was to explore the potential contribution of classroom management and professional collaboration as potential resources for educational resilience.

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