Impossible choices: The relationship between teacher salary and wellbeing for refugee and national teachers in South Sudan and Uganda

• In Event: Framing the Future of Teacher Wellbeing in Low-resource and Crisis Contexts: Definitions, Measures, and Motivations

Proposal

As I sat with Elizabeth (pseudonym), a South Sudanese primary school teacher in Palabek refugee settlement in northern Uganda, she described the inherent contradictions she felt being a teacher. “I don’t feel happy,” she explained. “The community is comparing teachers to the cheapest things because of our low payment, so I don’t feel happy. But, I also don’t feel sad. This is because I’m helping their children, I’m building the children up. That is my role and my duty. I have to support our children.” Elizabeth’s reflections represent a striking tension felt by teachers working across crisis and stable contexts alike. On the one hand, teachers are recognized as key actors in the economic, social, and cultural development and wellbeing of communities and countries (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017; Education for All, 2015). On the other hand, disinvestment and deprofessionalization of the teaching workforce pervade education practice and policy across the globe (Goldstein, 2015; Kraft & Lyon, 2022). Teachers increasingly find themselves equally, and at times simultaneously, revered and pilloried. This paradox has crucial implications for teacher wellbeing, or how teachers feel and function in their work (Falk et al., 2019), and thus for teacher retention and their plans for staying or leaving the profession. Yet, despite recent attention on teacher wellbeing in crisis contexts (Brandt & Lopes Cardozo, 2023; D’Sa et al., 2023; Falk et al., 2019; Falk, Shephard, & Mendenhall, 2022; Kirk & Winthrop, 2013; INEE, 2021, 2022), little is known about what factors – including this paradox – influence teacher wellbeing and their plans to remain in or leave the profession. Given teachers’ central role in the lives of their learners and rising rates of teacher attrition amidst burgeoning teacher shortages, it is imperative to address this gap (UNESCO, 2021).

This five-month qualitative study (January-June 2022) in Palabek refugee settlement (Uganda) and Torit (South Sudan) aims to do so by asking: What factors, across teachers’ homes, schools, and communities influence teacher wellbeing? I conducted life history interviews that comprised three discussions with 66 refugee and primary school teachers (n = 198 total interviews) and two months of participant observations in their six schools. This paper focuses on one central finding of this study: the interaction between salary and teacher wellbeing. Findings illustrate how teachers’ low and irregular salaries forced teachers to make impossible choices between dignity and survival and contributed to teachers’ declining status in society, which resulted in daily slights and the broader devaluing of the profession. While these challenges pushed many teachers to express their plans to leave the profession, others described their desire to remain teaching as their responsibility to give back to their communities. Teachers connected their persistence to sacrifice, giving up the chance to live a dignified life so future generations may have that chance. Amidst recent attention and advocacy on teacher salary, this paper contributes crucial evidence to how current teacher management policies can contribute – both negatively and positively – to teaching wellbeing, and ultimately teacher retention, amongst teachers working in crisis contexts.

Author

• Danielle Lorber Falk, International Rescue Committee (IRC)