An anomaly in the midst? Teaching as a protective factor for Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh

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

Proposal

Arising from overcrowded classrooms, sporadic professional development, and the paltry salaries that teachers contend with, ‘teacher wellbeing’ in crisis contexts came into focus with Kirk and Winthrop’s (2007; 2010) studies on female teachers’ work in Ethiopia. Despite pronounced uncertainty and harmful gender norms at the confluence of global and local dynamics, Kirk and Winthrop identify teaching as a protective factor for the forcibly displaced. Wolf et al.'s (2015; 2016) studies on cumulative risk in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) next measured the effects of risk factors on teachers’ work, showing how teacher burnout, low levels of motivation, and poor rates of retention are explained by the cumulative risks that teachers face. Building on the above notions, Falk et al.’s (2019) teacher wellbeing landscape review then wove together evidence from a plethora of Global North oriented wellbeing studies (e.g. Canrinus et al., 2012; Jennings et al., 2016; Greenberg, 2016) with early scholarship from fragile settings. This work presented a socio-ecological model that defined protective and risk factors at different levels of the education system (Brofenbrenner, 1974). More recently, Brandt and Cardoso-Lopez (2023) conceptualized teacher wellbeing within a cultural political economy framework, arguing that teacher wellbeing is best understood via the multi-scalar dynamics in which teachers work. These publications, among other contemporary empirical studies (see Coetzee, 2019; D’Sa et al. 2023; Falk et al. 2022; Mendenhal et al., 2019; Shephard et al. 2023), now accompany the INEE Teacher Wellbeing Toolkit (2022) to form a discrete body of scholarship and humanitarian guidance on teacher wellbeing.

Since Kirk and Winthrop’s (2007; 2013) initial research, however, the extent to which teaching can be a protective factor in the lives of refugees remains under-addressed, at least in empirical terms. As recognized by Dryden-Peterson (2017), education can mend the disjuncture of refugee learners’ lives. Does this reality still resonate for teachers, too? With this question in mind, using evidence from an ongoing mixed-methods study on refugee teachers’ work in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, I will draw from Kirk and Winthrop’s findings to explore how teaching provides a layer of protection in a context of extreme resource deprivation and near-total lack of mobility. Initial findings show that 85 percent of surveyed teachers (n=555) feel more protected within the camp context because they are teachers; 90 percent report that they experience more support from the community because of their roles; and 93 percent also report that they experience higher levels of respect from the community due to their work. Moreover, a regression analysis of factors relating to community- and school-level wellbeing shows a statistically significant relationship (<0.05 - <0.001) between community-level protective factors (safety, respect, and support) and the school-level wellbeing factors of teacher agency and self-efficacy. These findings are not entirely anomalous and do not discount the urgency of teachers’ personal and professional needs. But they do provide a timely reminder, with policy and practice implications in tow, that the work of teaching in crisis contexts is not always a risk in and of itself.

Author

• Chris J Henderson, Teachers College, Columbia University