Examining the Influence of SEL Interventions on the Relation Between Burnout and Teacher–child Interactions

• In Event: Teacher Wellbeing and Young Children’s Classroom Experiences: Exploring Evidence from the Early Grades

Abstract

Introduction:
Teacher–child interactions contribute to children’s success in school (Hamre & Pianta, 2001; Hughes, 2011). However, teachers who experience high levels of stress or burnout are less likely to engage in high quality interactions with students (Whittaker et al., 2015). The increasingly high burnout rates reported by early childhood educators (Gooze, 2014) have raised concerns about how best to support teachers, so they can, in turn, maintain positive relationships with their students (Roberts et al., 2016). One potential lever for supporting classroom interactions is providing teachers with tools to improve the social-emotional climate of the classroom (Bierman & Motamedi, 2015). Thus, an open question is whether teachers’ participation in SEL interventions can attenuate the negative relation that burnout has on their classroom interactions. The present study addressed this question by exploring the extent to which teachers’ professional development (PD) in three different SEL interventions (i.e., PATHS, Incredible Years [IY], Tools of the Mind [Tools]) moderated the relation between burnout and teacher–child interactions.

Hypotheses:
We expected overall participation in SEL PD to moderate the relation between burnout and interaction quality, such that the negative relation would be attenuated for some or all domains of interaction quality. Based on prior research indicating that PATHS and IY relate to classroom relationships (e.g., Hamre et al., 2012; Murray et al., 2018), we expected PATHS and IY to attenuate the negative relation between burnout and interactions. With regard to Tools, researchers have indicated the intervention is complex and may be challenging to implement (Farran & Wilson, 2014). As such, we did not hypothesize the same attenuating effect on burnout for Tools.

Study Population:
The present study utilizes data from Head Start CARES, a large randomized-control trial. Participants were 307 Head Start preschool teachers: 96% were female (M age = 43 years), 62% had at least a bachelor’s degree, and 63% had 10+ years of teaching experience.

Methods:
Preschool centers were randomly assigned to one of four treatment conditions: (1) IY, (2) PATHS, (3) Tools, or (4) control condition. Teachers completed a survey on job-related burnout (i.e., Emotional Exhaustion; Maslach et al., 1996) at pre-intervention. Observed teacher-child interaction quality was scored for all teachers at pre and post intervention using the three domains of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS): emotional support, instructional support, and classroom organization (Pianta et al., 2008).

Results:
As hypothesized, participation in SEL PD significantly moderated the relation between teachers’ burnout and their interaction quality. Specifically, burnout related negatively to Instructional Support for the control condition (β = -0.19, p < .05), but not for the SEL PD condition (β = 0.13, p > .05; Figure 1). Follow-up analyses revealed unique moderating effects for two types of PD. Specifically, for control teachers, higher self-reported burnout was associated with lower Instructional Support scores (β = -.02, p < .05). In contrast, the negative relation between burnout and Instructional Support was not present for PATHS (β = .02, p > .05) and IY teachers (β = .01, p > .05).

Authors

• Lia Sandilos, Temple University
  Presenting Author

• Priscilla Goble, Texas State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Samantha Schwartz, Temple University
  Non-Presenting Author