Principal and Teacher Organizational Conditions, Well-Being, and Turnover

• In Event: Teacher Well-Being Through the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

School leaders and teachers experience stress at greater rates than workers in other occupations (Steiner et al., 2022, Wang et al., 2018). With the added stress brought on by schooling in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, many policymakers and researchers have expressed concern about increasingly strenuous working conditions on education professionals’ mental health and intentions to leave (DeMatthews et al., 2023; Doan et al., 2023; Pressley, 2021). Yet, little research to date has linked working conditions to educator well-being and turnover.

In this study, we leverage statewide survey and administrative data to address two gaps in the educator (e.g., principal and teacher) well-being literature: (1) the role of social and organizational conditions in educators’ well-being; and (2) the extent to which educator wellbeing predicts subsequent turnover. Data are drawn from a statewide survey administered to all teachers and principals in the state of Utah in Spring 2021. We measured well-being with the validated TSWQ (Mankin et al., 2018). Teachers and principals also answered items about organizational conditions that have been shown in the literature to impact well-being, such as workload and number/strength of bonds with colleagues. The final analytic sample featured 9,690 teachers and 350 principals; responses were weighted to ensure representativeness.

Surveys were merged with state administrative data and analyzed for descriptive patterns. Using fixed effect regression, we predict well-being as a function of observable school characteristics, such as school grade band, locale, and size; individual characteristics, such as gender, race, and years of experience; and survey measures of social and organizational conditions identified in the literature as antecedents of well-being (e.g., number of colleague bonds, quality of leader support). We then model turnover as observed in administrative data as a function of well-being, using school (for teachers) and district (for principals) fixed effects to make within-system comparisons. Finally, we employ qualitative analysis of open-ended survey responses to add insight to the main results.

Findings revealed modest variation in teacher and principal well-being across school characteristics and organizational conditions. For example, secondary teachers tended to report lower well-being relative to elementary teachers. However, the majority of variance existed at the individual level. Years of experience in the same school and feeling supported by supervisors were related to higher well-being for teachers and principals. Additionally, having more than two close colleagues and having close bonds with multiple different school stakeholders predicted higher well-being for teachers but not principals.

Qualitative analysis of open-ended survey items revealed educators particularly valued belonging and acceptance (psychological safety). However, a subset of educators—such as LGBTQ+ educators—shared that they felt their identities impacted their well-being because they did not conform to organizational or community norms. Wellbeing closely predicted subsequent year turnover. Our findings speak to the importance of both organizational and social conditions for fostering teacher well-being and retention, as well as the potential for social support to be a “double-edged sword” for educators holding non-dominant identities in demographically homogenous organizations.

Authors

• Laura K. Rogers, University of Virginia

• Lydia Gandy-Fastovich, University of Utah

• David S Woo, University of Utah