Cumulative Risk and Newly Qualified Teachers’ Professional Well-being: Evidence from Rural Ghana

• In Event: Teacher education programmes: lessons from Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Europe

Proposal

Despite increased school enrollment across sub-Saharan Africa, improving student learning outcomes remains a challenge. Many teachers are undertrained and lack the ability to teach effectively. One approach to addressing this issue is to build teachers’ capacity through their pre-service training. Yet rarely are student-teachers’ experiences examined, particularly during their transition to becoming full time newly qualified teachers (NQTs). Research after previous reforms to the pre-service training system in the 1990s in Ghana found that positive attitudes toward teaching deteriorated from the beginning to end of the student-teaching year, and even more so for NQTs for primary school teachers. When asked to speculate about their career in 5 years, over 80% indicated that they would most likely have gone on to further studies, and only 3% thought they would still be teaching (Akyeampong & Lewin, 2002).

These results suggest that teachers’ professional well-being may play an important role during the first few years of teaching. There is growing concern of low motivation levels among teachers in Ghana (Bennell & Akyeompong, 2007). Job burnout leads to lower productivity, absenteeism and more turnover. Personal accomplishment has been linked to different dimensions of burnout. Low levels of job satisfaction has been found as an important reason for teachers leaving the profession (Green-Reese, Johnson, & Campbell, 1992).

Recognizing the importance of teacher well-being, this paper analyzes personal and professional risk factors that explain professional well-being of student-teachers in the western region of rural Ghana. We analyze longitudinal data on 135 student-teachers, enrolled in the Holy Child College of Education in Takoradi during their student-teaching year, as well as the following year as NQTs, placed in classrooms across 117 schools. The paper addresses three research questions:
1. Do personal and professional risks during the student-teaching year predict professional well-being of student-teachers?
2. Do personal and professional risks during the student-teaching year predict professional well-being of NQTs at the start of the following year?
3. Do personal and professional risks of NQTs predict professional well-being at the end of the first year of full-time teaching?
Personal risk factors include household hardship (number of people living in household), health and well-being (food insecurity, family health, personal health) and social isolation (number of years living in current town, proximity to family and friends). Professional risk factors include objective and subjective work conditions. Objective work conditions are captured by length of commute to work, number of students, number of working hours required each week, percentage of time spent on administrative tasks and on actual teaching, and whether teacher had another job in the school or outside in the past year. The subjective work conditions are measured by self-reported quality of supervision by school, perceptions of problematic school environment and parental support towards their children’s education. Teacher professional well-being is captured by self-reported measures of motivation, burnout, job satisfaction and personal accomplishments.

On average, student-teachers experience 3.28 out of seven personal risks (SD=0.85) and 2.06 risks out of twelve professional risks (SD=1.45). Similarly, NQTs experience 5.02 risks out of eight personal risks (SD=1.19) and 3.06 professional risks out of twelve professional risks (SD=1.40) at the start of the first year of full-time teaching; however, the personal risks increase to 5.30 (SD=1.28) and professional risks decrease to 2.54 (SD=1.32) by the end of the first year of full-time teaching.

We find that there is a statistically significant and positive relationship between personal cumulative risk and burnout (coefficient=0.173, p<0.1), while there is a statistically significant and negative relationship of professional cumulative risk with motivation (coefficient =-0.159, p<0.05) and personal accomplishment (coefficient=-0.145, p<0.05). This suggests that each additional risk is associated with higher burnout (0.173/1.0815=16.00%) and lower teacher motivation (-0.159/0.542=-29.33%) and lower personal accomplishment (-0.145/0.858=-16.90%) by approximately a magnitude of 16-30% of a standard deviation. However, there is no statistically significant relationship between job satisfaction and personal or professional cumulative risks. We do not find any relationship between personal or professional cumulative risk with the well-being of NQTs at the start of the first year of full-time teaching.

However, there is a positive relationship of professional cumulative risk with burnout (coefficient =0.148, p<0.1) and a negative relationship with personal accomplishment (b=-0.136, p<0.05) for NQTs at the end of the first year of full-time teaching. These account to more burnout (0.148/0.944=15.68%) and lower personal accomplishment (-0.136/0.933=-14.58%) by approximately a magnitude of 15% of a standard deviation for each additional risk experienced.

These findings illustrate the importance of risk factors that affect teacher well-being during pre-service training and particularly, during transition to become full-time NQTs, with implications for whether teachers become effective teachers, and if they remain in the teaching profession. Improved support in the first years of teaching may be critical.

Authors

• Syeda Farwa Fatima, University of Pennsylvania

• Sharon Wolf, University of Pennsylvania