Fostering Professional Engagement and Well-Being to Ensure the Success of All Students

• In Event: 30.053 - The Emerging Age of Engagement, Identity, and Well-Being: New Research Findings From Ontario

Abstract

Research findings link high levels of teacher engagement to higher levels of engagement and achievement among students (Bidewell, 2014; Kirkpatrick & Moore Johnson, 2014). Likewise, research reveals a correlation between student well-being and student achievement (Noble et al., 2008) and “well teachers” as essential for fostering “well students” (McCallum & Price, 2010, p. 20; Roffey, 2012). Yet, while nurturing student engagement and well-being is gaining prominence in school reform, cultivating engaged and “well teachers” has often remained at the margins. Some of the districts that comprise this study are unusual in their promotion of professional engagement and well-being. This presentation highlights recent initiatives to support and sustain educator engagement and well-being by enacting different ways of “Leading from the Middle.”

This presentation is framed by Hargreaves and Ainscow’s (2015) conception of Leading from the Middle (LfM). LfM is about the sharing and circulation of resources, ideas, and expertise through collaboration and the exercise of collective responsibility for the successes of all students. While some of the 10 districts studied in this CODE project embodied the collective nature of LfM, others exemplified controlling from the middle, deciding what teachers should do instead of consulting with them. Interviews and focus groups revealed intentional effort to foster professional engagement and well-being in some districts through varied and in some cases, dissonant interpretations and enactments of LfM.

In one case, a district addressed teacher well-being not by LfM, but by funding hundreds of individual teachers to do online courses in mindfulness, additional to and away from their daily work. One group of districts defined LfM as selected experts in specific roles as when a team of organizational leaders determined and enforced a math initiative with little consideration of impacts on the engagement or well-being of those responsible for implementation. Another group of districts conceptualized LfM as led by itinerate “master teachers” with the role of working with and beside teachers to defuse deficit mindsets and build their confidence and capacity. One more set of districts chose more inclusive LfM practices, forming multidisciplinary teams that worked collaboratively on shared goals. These districts included teachers in content area task forces, interdisciplinary collaborative inquiry networks, and professional learning communities to collaborate on self selected topics to improve instruction and student learning. One such district designed a truly collaborative multidisciplinary support team, using teacher-selected data and concerns as a starting point for authentic discussions, decision-making, and action.

While some school districts worldwide are shifting from a singular focus on achievement to nurturing students’ social, emotional, and physical needs, others have not recognized the importance of supporting the professional engagement and well-being of educators to ensure that every students succeeds. LfM is an emergent change that encompasses most teachers in their embedded everyday work in some cases, or a number of expert teachers for whom LfM is their specialized work in other districts. Meanwhile, residual habits of dis-embedded and individualized learning prevail in online mindfulness offerings.

Author

• Shanee A Wangia, Boston College