Part 1 of 2: Understanding teachers’ perspectives of well-being in fragile contexts: Theory and examples from practice

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Teachers stand on the front lines of realizing the ambitious and critical goal of providing an education necessary to promote a sustainable, peaceful, and prosperous future for all children and youth. As education systems shift to demanding not only enrollment outcomes but holistic learning outcomes—academic, social-emotional, health, and cultural skills—teachers are held accountable and asked to be masters-of-all trades. This is particularly true in low resource, crisis, and conflict-affected contexts, where weakened education systems, combined with political, social, and/or economic instability and forced migration, require that teachers don myriad hats in working with their students, and within their schools and communities. The COVID-19 pandemic and school closures have increased the demands placed on teachers, who are now tasked with providing quality education and supporting students’ well-being remotely, often with minimal or no professional development support, and while coping with the effects of the pandemic in their own lives.

Teachers must navigate such demands while facing numerous risks at multiple ecological levels, including but not limited to: 1) the teacher level, including inadequate and/or inconsistent pay and stressful disruptions in their own family and social networks; 2) the school level, including large class sizes and limited school leadership and support; and 3) the community level, including societal norms that devalue the role of teachers. In low resource, crisis, and conflict-affected settings, few, if any, supports are available to help teachers build the complex skill sets needed to effectively address both these barriers and the multi-faceted demands they encounter with their students and in their professional lives. The supports that are available traditionally treat teachers like production functions, the input being in-service training focused on specific curricula and the output being gains in student learning, with little attention paid to helping teachers navigate the roles, expectations, and stressors they must balance at the nexus of students’ lives and systems’ accountability.

The human and economic costs of deprioritizing support for teachers, particularly their well-being and social-emotional competence, and the systemic conditions that constrain and enable such support are clear in stable contexts; the literature and empirical evidence on teacher well-being from the United States and Europe show that teaching is among one of the most stressful occupations. Evidence also indicates that teachers are the strongest school-level variable associated with student learning and has identified a significant relationship between teachers’ well-being and students’ social, emotional, and cognitive development. Yet, despite the recognition that teachers are key actors in their students’ learning and that teaching is one of the most stressful professions, there are few education policies and programs that provide clear guidance on how to support teacher well-being.

Though it has become more common for national education sector plans and humanitarian response plans to reference teacher well-being, there is still a gap in translating support for teacher well-being into practice. Addressing this gap is particularly urgent given COVID-19 response and recovery efforts; teachers are central to ensuring a safe return to school and education opportunities for all children. Teachers are frontline workers in implementing Safe Back to School plans, and supporting teachers’ safety, mental health, and well-being is foundational to any recovery effort. It is also critical that teachers contribute to planning and contextualizing back to school guidance; teachers’ experience, expertise, and professional development and well-being needs should inform decision-making on timelines and criteria for reopening.

The persistent gaps in research, policy, and programming call for a concerted effort to mobilize resources and expertise around teacher well-being. Recognizing this need, the Education Equity Research Initiative (2016-2020; www.educationequity2030.org) formed the Teacher Social-Emotional Well-being Task Team to build the evidence base and drive the conversation around the role of teacher well-being in education equity, particularly in contexts of crisis, conflict, and displacement. As part of its work, the Education Equity Research Initiative collaborated with the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) Teachers in Crisis and Conflict (TiCC) and Psychosocial Support and Social-Emotional Learning (PSS-SEL) Collaboratives to produce a Landscape Review and Conceptual Framework that examines the individual and contextual factors that influence teacher well-being in low resource, crisis, and conflict-affected contexts.

The organizations in this panel contributed to the development of the Landscape Review and will share the process for developing the Conceptual Framework, lessons learned from applying the Conceptual Framework in programming, and insights on how the Education in Emergencies community can better support and assess teacher well-being in low resource, crisis, and conflict-affected settings.

The panel will include presentations from three international non-governmental organizations and one University. The first presentation will share the Conceptual Framework for Teacher Well-being produced under the Education Equity Research Initiative, which outlines the individual and contextual factors that support or hinder teacher well-being and provides programmatic and policy guidance for scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and donors to bolster collective support for the well-being of teachers. The second presentation will discuss contextualizing and operationalizing the Conceptual Framework through a holistic teacher program that aims to support teacher well-being through scaffolded and real time, individualized support and psychological care to teachers. The third presentation will present a mixed-method approach to assess the effects of El Salvadorian Integrated Systems of Full-Time Inclusive Schools (SI-EITP), which offers in-service teacher professional development (TPD) combined with a socioemotional learning (SEL) intervention, on teacher well-being; the evaluation focuses on five key constructs of teacher-well-being: mindfulness, emotional regulation, perceived stress, emotional exhaustion and classroom management self-efficacy. Taken together, these presentations will shed light on the gaps in the existing research and evidence base on teacher well-being, and provide examples for how to approach programming, measurement, research, and policymaking in a way that provides comprehensive support to teachers and teacher well-being.

Sub Unit

• Education, Conflict, and Emergencies SIG

Individual Presentations

• A conceptual framework for teacher well-being in low resource, crisis, and conflict-affected settings - Emily Varni, Save the Children US; Danielle Falk, Teachers College, Columbia University

• How to improve teacher well-being and social-emotional competencies? Developing and testing a coaching based well-being intervention for teachers in Colombia. - April Coetzee, War Child Holland

• The effects of adding social emotional learning to a comprehensive education intervention in El Salvador on teacher well-being: Mixed methods evaluation - Nina Cunha, FHI 360