Evaluating the Effect of Mental Health Induction Supports on Beginning Teachers’ Burnout, Anxiety and Depressive Symptoms.

• In Event: New Evidence on Supporting Teacher Effectiveness

Abstract

Background
Many well-intentioned teacher induction programs remain embedded in prescriptive systems that prioritize compliance and productivity over the holistic needs of teachers as humans (Ghiraldini, 2023). Persistent reports of teacher stress and burnout underscore the need for induction frameworks that humanize the teaching profession—approaches that acknowledge the emotional, relational, and intellectual complexity of teachers’ work and view well-being as foundational to effectiveness and longevity. Compared to veteran teachers, beginning teachers tend to experience more mental health challenges that can affect their well-being, instructional quality, retention, and their students’ learning. Prior research has suggested that induction programs have the potential to redress these initial experiences and strengthen teachers’ well-being.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine the potential of mental health–focused induction supports to enhance first-year elementary teachers’ well-being and reduce early symptoms of burnout.
Methods
We examined how mental health components of induction support programs for beginning teachers influenced their levels of burnout, depressive symptoms, and anxiety using a sample of 713 teachers. We used targeted maximum likelihood estimation (TMLE) within the targeted learning framework  with a Super Learner ensemble for data-adaptive estimation of treatment effects (van der Laan & Rose, 2011). Incorporating machine learning within TMLE enabled us to flexibly model complex relationships among induction, covariates and outcomes without assuming, for example, linear or additive relationships. We also performed sensitivity analyses to assess the extent to which our key findings are sensitive to different analytical approaches (ML vs conventional approaches), missing data imputation methods, and unobserved confounding variables.
Findings
Overall, we found that mental health–specific induction supports were associated with meaningful reductions in the two key symptoms of teacher burnout (emotional exhaustion and depersonalization) by the end of the first year of full-time teaching (Table 1 in the appendix). These effects, though modest, are noteworthy given the complexity of psychological outcomes and the short time frame examined. Teachers who received such supports reported lower levels of emotional depletion and detachment, both of which have been strongly linked to teacher attrition and student learning outcomes (Klusmann et al., 2016; Ronfeldt et al., 2013). On the other hand, we found that anxiety and depressive symptoms were not significantly associated with exposure to mental health induction supports.
Conclusions
This study offers timely and forward-leaning evidence that mental health-specific induction supports may play a meaningful role in improving the psychological well-being of beginning teachers. We provide important initial empirical evidence that structured mental health supports embedded within induction programs have the potential to reduce two key dimensions of teacher burnout: emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. These findings are particularly relevant in the current post-pandemic context, where the mental health of educators is under heightened strain and teacher attrition remains a national concern.

Author

• Amota Ataneka, University of Hawaii
  Presenting Author