Exploring teacher well-being, competency, and agency in humanitarian contexts: Insights from cross-country quantitative research

• In Event: Articulations of teacher agency in conflict-affected settings: Research with, for, and by teachers in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.

Proposal

The enormity of the challenges faced by teachers in humanitarian contexts has significant impact on their well-being and professional agency (Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies, 2019; Falk et al., 2019). Recognizing the interdependence between these elements and effective teaching, Save the Children places them at the centre of its teacher professional development (TPD) programming, beginning with situational analyses to understand the pressures teachers face and to identify protective and risk factors to inform interventions. Embedding well-being and motivation into TPD ensures teachers are not only skilled but also supported, respected, and motivated, enabling them to create safe, constructive, and inclusive learning environments (Becker et al., 2017; Jennings et al., 2017).

Teacher agency, framed through the interplay of teachers’ experiences, resources, and contexts, is closely tied to well-being. When teachers can exercise professional judgement and engage meaningfully with their environments, their motivation and sense of efficacy are strengthened, while constrained agency is linked to stress and burnout (Priestley, Biesta, & Robinson, 2015). Embedding both teacher agency and well-being into professional development and system design is therefore essential for sustainable improvements in teaching and learning.

To assess this, Save the Children utilises the Teacher Motivation and well-being Tool, a Likert-scale survey instrument adapted from Guajardo (2011), alongside a self-assessment framework on teacher competencies. To date, this survey research has been conducted in contexts as diverse as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Syria, and Uganda.

This paper presents emerging findings from exploratory, multi-dimensional quantitative analysis on the datasets collected with these tools in humanitarian settings, aiming to generate insights into teacher well-being in these contexts by empirically examining how it is shaped by various individual, school and systems level factors. Whilst there is a growing body of research on teacher well-being, systematic reviews (Hascher and Waber, 2021; Dreer, 2023; Fox et al., 2023) still primarily rely on research from the Global North in drawing out patterns of associations for metrics, drivers, mediators, and outcomes of teacher well-being. This research therefore seeks to explore the comparability of these trends in humanitarian contexts. In particular, the research explores the link between inclusive and collaborative school culture, relationships and recognition with positive well-being amongst teachers. The research specifically looks at differences between male and female teachers in their experiences of school safety and culture and the differences in well-being and perceived teaching competency for teachers with disabilities.

This research seeks to identify patterns that may inform contextually relevant and scalable policy responses. Building on this analysis, the paper considers the implications for how teacher well-being and agency can be supported or constrained in crisis-affected education systems. It highlights the need for data-informed, system-wide approaches that place teacher well-being and agency at the heart of humanitarian education responses. By contributing empirical insights into the relationship between teachers’ working conditions, self-perceptions, and agency, the paper makes the case for embedding teacher well-being and agency not only into professional development efforts but into the broader design of education systems in crisis-affected contexts.

Authors

• Sophie Lashford, Save the Children

• Julia Finder Johna, Save the Children