Part 2 of 2: Understanding teachers’ perspectives of well-being in fragile contexts: Need for holistic and contextualized tools

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

For teachers, the COVID-19 pandemic may result in psychological distress, which can stem from related health risks and the increased workload of teaching in new and challenging ways with inadequate professional support. Unaddressed, this can result in high rates of teacher absenteeism, which undermines efforts to reopen schools and build resilience across the system. Multiple studies illustrate the positive effects on child and adolescent well-being and performance associated with teachers’ own mental health and well-being. Teachers with high levels of self-worth and self-efficacy in a time of crisis are better able to implement new and innovative teaching strategies, which leads teachers to feel more satisfied, motivated, and committed to their work. For this reason, teacher mental health and well-being should be considered as a central strategy within the broader COVID-19 education sector response.

As education systems reopen, school-based health and safety measures will be facilitated by school leaders and teachers. From gender-responsive WASH provisions, classroom reconfiguration and social distancing, to initial triaging of COVID-related health risks, teachers are at the forefront of recovery. Consequently, and keeping female teachers’ own domestic pressures in mind, appropriate strategies for teacher professional development and well-being support is vital. And if done well, will result in long-term benefits as teachers act as community thought leaders, ensuring safety, health and learning continuity during COVID-19 and beyond.

Although teaching can be a rewarding profession, outside of crisis contexts teaching is also identified as one of the most stressful occupations. Recent research has identified an increasing number of teachers affected by stress and burnout. Studies surveying teachers from the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and U.S. show that about one-third of all teachers interviewed reported teaching to be “stressful” or “extremely stressful”.

Teachers across different contexts face several work-related stressors, which may include expectations to manage students with behavioral difficulties, problems with parent-teacher relationships, high job demands, lack of information, lack of autonomy, lack of planning time, an increased emphasis on accountability measures, and school systems becoming more bureaucratic. Most of the studies include work and personal dimensions identifying three spheres from which teachers are studied: school, work and personal. In low-income countries and countries affected by crises and conflict, teachers face an additional set of unique challenges both in and out of work. In these settings, classrooms may be over-crowded and under resourced; teacher to pupil ratio may be high; and while teachers may require support for their own psychosocial needs, they are often expected to accommodate the mental, social and emotional needs of learners in their classrooms. Additionally, high and often increasing workloads, limited incentives, and low compensation make the situation even more challenging. Teacher well-being has implications for teacher quality, equitable access to education, student learning and well-being, and the retention and sustainability of the teaching workforce.

To inform policy and advance research on teacher well-being in low-income countries and contexts affected by crisis and conflict, we need measurement tools that are not only reliable, valid, comparable and feasible, but also contextually relevant. For education systems, school districts and school-based leadership to adequately support teachers, they first need to know what a teacher is experiencing in order to determine how to improve their experience. Several measurement tools with strong psychometric properties have been developed and validated in the Western contexts to capture various dimensions of well-being, but we do not know if they are adequate for collecting information about teachers’ well-being in low-income and crisis-affected countries. Oftentimes researchers and practitioners use measurement tools validated in developed countries with little or no contextualization, raising questions on whether the content of the tool still captures the construct in the new setting. Few studies focus on adapting and examining the psychometric properties of well-being measurement tools with teacher samples in low-income and crisis-affected countries.

In addition to the dearth of quality process in developing or adapting measurement tools to the context in order to assess teacher well-being, few if any studies develop or adapt these quantitative tools starting from listening to teacher’s voices about their own understanding and experience of well-being. The consequence of this gap is reflected in a lack of contextualized and holistic tools capable of identifying risk and protective factors of teachers’ well-being. It is this gap that defines and guides the focus of this panel.

Addressing issues and priorities outlined above, this panel will include presentations from two Universities, one international non-governmental organization, and one local higher education institute. The first presentation provides a critical perspective on teachers’ work in crisis contexts and examines how teachers have been historically excluded from education policy and practice guidance in crisis contexts, highlighting the importance of strengthening the coherence between international humanitarian interventions and teachers’ capacities and needs. The second presentation comprises three panelists and presents the voice of primary school teachers in Uganda about their own understanding of well-being that was investigated through an ethnographic study. This is the first step for developing a content-specific tool to assess well-being. The final presentation will present the development of a teacher well-being measurement toolkit in the context of El Salvador, which helps meet the call for an increased understanding of current levels of teacher well-being in the El Salvadorian context and explores the factors and interventions that can influence teacher well-being. Taken together, these presentations will shed light on assessing processes grounded in teachers’ perspectives in order to identify how factors that influence well-being manifest for teachers across gender, context, years teaching, school location and other characteristics.

Sub Unit

• Education, Conflict, and Emergencies SIG

Chair

• Mary Mendenhall, Teachers College, Columbia University

Individual Presentations

• The case for localized and culturally informed approaches to teacher well-being in post-disaster contexts - Christopher John Henderson, Teachers College, Columbia University

• A participatory approach to defining and measuring teacher well-being in Uganda - Monica Fontana, Universidad Complutense de Madrid; Nikhit D'Sa, University of Notre Dame

• Developing and evaluating the psychometric properties of a teacher well-being assessment toolkit using a sample of El Salvadorian Teachers - Fernanda Soares, FHI 360