Teacher Stress Amid Persistent Racial Injustice: Examining Challenges and Opportunities in Context

• In Event: In Our Feelings: Exploring Emotionality in (Teacher) Education

Abstract

Through COVID-19 and elevated visibility of racism, stress has plagued teachers. Although emerging scholarship has described the negative consequences of the pandemic for teachers, few studies examine the elevated visibility of societal racial injustice as a potential source of stress for teachers.
The current study employs a mixed methods design to explore how elementary teachers experience and manage racism-related stressors across multiple contexts. We used hierarchical regression to analyze survey results; our preliminary findings suggest that teachers’ experiences of everyday discrimination are significantly associated with perceived stress, above additional racism-related stressors. The presence of supports mitigates the relationships between school-located racism-related stressors and perceived stress. We anticipate that our qualitative interviews will explain and enhance these preliminary quantitative findings.

Authors

• Olga Pagan, New York University

• Elizabeth Blair Cox, New York University

• Diane L. Hughes, New York University