Developing and Validating a Scalable, Multidimensional Measure of Teacher Well-Being

• In Event: The Development and Initial Validation of Four Ecologically Valid, Multidimensional, and Scalable Social-Emotional Learning Assessment Tools

Abstract

Teachers in the United States report among the highest rates of stress and burnout recorded compared to other professions (McIntyre, McIntyre, & Francis, 2017). In a recent poll, 46% of teachers indicated experiencing high levels of daily stress, which was tied with stress levels reported by nurses and exceeded that of medical doctors (Gallup, 2014). The effects of unaddressed, chronic teacher ill-being are consequential. Between 30-50% of teachers leave the profession in the first five years, with stress and burnout serving as key etiological factors (Greenberg, Brown, & Abenavoli, 2016). The cost of teacher turnover to the US economy is estimated to exceed $7 billion annually (National Commission on Teacher and America’s Future, 2007). Importantly, teachers’ social-emotional functioning plays a vital role in student psychological well-being and academic success (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009; Milkie & Warner, 2011; Oberle & Schonert-Reichl, 2016; Roorda et al., 2011). As such, teachers overwhelmed with frustration and distress may transmit these feelings to their students with potentially deleterious consequences for student well-being and academic engagement.

In a preliminary study with school boards in one Northeastern US state, we found that 53% of school districts had no plan in place to address teacher stress and burnout, despite noting it as a problem (Authors, 2019). One reason for this notable gap between knowledge and policy may be that brief, multi-faceted, and ecologically valid measures of teacher well-being are lacking. In the present research, we used the natural language organically generated by over 5000 teachers to describe their real (actual) and ideal (desired) emotional experiences at school to construct a new teacher well-being measure: The Educator Well-Being Index (EWI). The EWI provides well-being data on 15 factors across the three most empirically supported domains of well-being in affective science: Social Well-Being (e.g., Social Acceptance and Exclusion; Keyes, 1999; Ryan & Deci, 2000), Eudaimonic Well-Being (e.g., Inspiration and Exhaustion; Ryan & Deci, 2001; Ryff & Singer, 2008), and Hedonic Well-Being (e.g., Contentment and Anxiety; Diener, 2009; Lyubomirsky, 2008). The EWI’s multidimensionality affords the creation of ‘well-being profiles’ that offer a more granular understanding of teacher well-being than current measures provide. Furthermore, by pinpointing areas of flourishing and opportunities for growth in well-being, the EWI supports more targeted social and emotional learning (SEL) and well-being intervention efforts.

In this session, we will present preliminary findings on the development and validation of the EWI. Specifically, we’ll report psychometric results regarding the internal consistency (reliability), factorial validity (factor structure), and initial convergent and divergent validity of the EWI in a sample of N=465 classroom teachers from the US (see Tables 1-3 below for initial reliability and factor validity results). We will discuss how this assessment tool can be employed in the context of rigorous SEL research, such as randomized controlled trials of SEL programs for educators, and scaled for school applications, such as developing and tracking the efficacy of school-based educator well-being efforts.

Authors

• James Floman, Yale University

• Marc A. Brackett, Yale University

• Annette Ponnock, Yale University

• Beatris Garcia, Yale University