01.Professional Learning and Development
Paper
Teacher Burnout as Mediator of the Relationship Between Social and Emotional Competencies and Teacher Commitment
Mirta Mornar, Ivana Pikić Jugović, Iris Marušić, Dora Petrović, Josip Šabić, Jelena Matić Bojić
Institute for Social Research in Zagreb, Croatia
Presenting Author: Mornar, Mirta;
Pikić Jugović, Ivana
Teaching comes with a great deal of stress and emotional challenges, and is often considered one of the most stressful professions (Maslach et al., 2001). Research suggests that work-related stress combined with the lack of personal and organizational resources for coping with it is one of the primary reasons teachers decide to leave the profession (Montgomery & Rupp, 2005). Consequently, teacher attrition is becoming a growing challenge for educational systems internationally, with aspects of occupational well-being proving central for the decision to leave the teaching profession (OECD, 2020; Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004). In Croatia, around a third of teachers express the desire to leave the teaching profession (Radeka & Sorić, 2006), and, as well as many other European countries, Croatia is beginning to face the problem of recruiting, hiring, and retaining teachers (European Commission, 2018; Katsarova, 2020; Marušić et al., 2017). Therefore, raising awareness about teachers’ occupational well-being and implementing policies to support it can be beneficial not only for teachers and their students, but for entire educational systems and communities.
Since teacher attrition has significant consequences at the system level, research has been dedicated to identifying teachers who are at the highest risk of leaving the profession. According to analyses of teacher attrition, 40-50% of teachers decide to leave the teaching profession during the first 5 years of their careers (Ingersoll & Merrill, 2013; Perda, 2013). This suggests that attrition rates are especially high in early-career teachers, who often have difficulties making the transition from their initial education to work due to the amount of stress they are faced with in their beginning years of teaching. Meanwhile, not much attention is directed to occupational health and well-being of teachers and supporting them in this aspect through pre-service and in-service training. This points to the importance of identifying predictors of the decision to leave the teaching profession, in order to provide support to young teachers during their transition into the profession and thus contribute to the prevention of early-career teachers’ attrition through strengthening their commitment to the profession.
One way to foster teachers’ occupational well-being and their motivation to stay in the profession is through strengthening their social and emotional competencies (SEC): their self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship skills. Teachers' SEC are related to their occupational well-being by influencing how teachers cope with emotional challenges in their everyday work (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). This points to social and emotional competencies as potential psychological resources that can alleviate negative outcomes such as burnout and leaving the profession in early-career teachers (Bakker & Schaufeli, 2000; Mérida-López et al., 2020). However, research in this field has remained fragmented and has examined these competencies and relevant outcomes in isolation.
This research aims to investigate the relationships between early-career teachers’ social and emotional competencies, burnout and teacher commitment. We will first examine SEC as predictors of teacher commitment, under the hypothesis that teachers with lower SEC are less likely to stay in the teaching profession. We will further explore burnout as a potential mediator of the relationship between SEC and teacher commitment, to examine whether teachers with lower SEC experience higher burnout and are therefore less likely to stay in the teaching profession.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe research presented in this abstract is part of a broader research project titled The role of personality, motivation and socio-emotional competences in early-career teachers' occupational well-being funded by the Croatian Science Foundation. Research was conducted in Croatia from October 2022 to January 2023. The invitation to participate was distributed to all elementary schools in Croatia, in order to include as many early-career teachers as possible. School principals and counsellors then forwarded the questionnaire to early-career teachers working in their schools. 534 lower secondary teachers with up to 5 years of teaching experience participated in the research by completing an online questionnaire. The research was conducted according to ethical standards and with the approval obtained by the Ethics Committee of the authors’ institution.
Teachers’ social and emotional competencies were measured by the Social and Emotional Competencies Questionnaire (SEC-Q) (Zych et al., 2018). The questionnaire consists of 16 items which measure four dimensions of social and emotional competencies, namely self-awareness, self-management and motivation, social awareness and prosocial behaviour, and decision making. Answers are given on a 5-point Likert type scale (1=Strongly disagree, 5=Strongly agree). All subscales had good reliability with Cronbach’s alphas measuring 0.85, 0.83, 0.78, 0.80, respectively, while the whole scale also demonstrated high reliability (Cronbach’s α = 0.88).
Teacher burnout was measured by the Burnout Assesment Tool (Schaufeli et al., 2020). The questionnaire consists of 23 items which measure four core symptoms of burnout: exhaustion, mental distance, cognitive impairment, and emotional impairment. We used the total score as an indicator of teachers’ level of burnout. Answers are given on a 5-point frequency scale (1=Never, 5=Always). The scale demonstrated high reliability with Cronbach’s alpha score of 0.94.
Teacher commitment was assessed using one item: How sure are you that you will continue working as a teacher? Answers were given on a 7-point Likert type scale (1=Not at all, 7=Completely). Higher values point to stronger commitment to staying in the teaching profession.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsIn order to analyse whether SEC predict early-career teachers’ commitment, a hierarchical regression analysis was conducted. Each of the dimensions of SEC was introduced into the model in separate steps, to be able to distinguish the individual contribution of each dimension. The analysis concluded that SEC explained 12% of the variance of teacher commitment, with all the steps of the model contributing significantly to the total amount of variance explained. Among the four SEC dimensions, self-management and motivation appeared to be the best predictor of teacher commitment, explaining approximately 8% of its variance.
We then conducted separate mediation analyses for each of the predictors by using PROCESS macro for SPSS (Hayes, 2018), to explore the role of burnout in the relationship between SEC and teacher commitment. Results suggest that burnout fully mediates the relationships between self-awareness, self-management and motivation, and decision making and teacher commitment. Early-career teachers with lower self-awareness, social awareness and prosocial behaviour, and decision making skills experience more symptoms of burnout, and are therefore more likely to leave the teaching profession. Burnout proved to significantly mediate the relationship between self-management and motivation and teacher commitment as well, however, the mediation was partial, which means that the direct effect of self-management and motivation on teacher commitment remained significant after controlling for burnout. This suggests that burnout is not the only mechanism underlying the relationship.
Taken together, these findings support the notion that SEC can play an important role in the prevention of burnout, and consequently, teacher attrition, especially in the early years of working as a teacher. More attention should be given to strengthening teachers’ SEC and occupational well-being through their professional development, by placing emphasis on skills needed to successfully navigate through the emotional challenges which accompany the teaching profession.
ReferencesBakker, A.B., & Schaufeli, W.B. (2000). Burnout Contagion Processes Among Teachers. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 30(11), 2289–2308.
European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice (2018). Teaching careers in Europe: Access, progression, and support. Eurydice Report. Luxemburg: Publications Office of the European Union.
Hayes, A.F. (2018). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach. Guilford publications.
Ingersoll, R., & Merrill, E. (2013). Seven trends: The transformation of the teaching force. CPRE Report. Philadelphia: Consortium for Policy Research in Education, University of Pennsylvania.
Jennings, P.A., & Greenberg, M.T. (2009). The Prosocial Classroom: Teacher Social and Emotional Competence in Relation to Student and Classroom Outcomes. Review of Educational Research, 79(1), 491–525.
Katsarova, I. (2020). Teaching careers in the EU. Why boys do not want to be teachers. [Briefing]. European Parliamentary Research Service.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2019/642220/EPRS_BRI(2019)642220_EN.pdf
Marušić, I., Jugović, I., & Pavin Ivanec, T. (2017). How personality dimensions and motivation to teach shape the learning achievement goals of Croatian future teachers. In: Global Perspectives on teacher motivation. Cambridge University Press, pp. 189-219.
Maslach, C., Schaufeli, W.B., & Leiter, M.P. (2001). Job burnout. Annual review of psychology, 52(1), 397-422.
Mérida-López, S., Sánchez-Gómez, M., & Extremera, N. (2020). Leaving the teaching profession: Examining the role of social support, engagement and emotional intelligence in teachers’ intentions to quit. Psychosocial Intervention, 29(3), 141-151.
Montgomery, C., & Rupp, A.A. (2005). A Meta-Analysis for Exploring the Diverse Causes and Effects of Stress in Teachers. Canadian Journal of Education / Revue Canadienne de l’éducation, 28(3), 458.
OECD (2020). TALIS 2018 Results (Volume II): Teachers and School Leaders as Valued Professionals, TALIS, OECD Publishing, Paris.
Perda, D. (2013). Transitions into and out of teaching: A longitudinal analysis of early career teacher turnover (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
Radeka, I., & Sorić, I. (2006). Zadovoljstvo poslom i profesionalni status nastavnika. Napredak: časopis za pedagogijsku teoriju i praksu, 147(2), 161-177.
Schaufeli, W.B., & Bakker, A.B. (2004). Job demands, job resources, and their relationship with burnout and engagement: A multi-sample study. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 25(3), 293–315.
Schaufeli, W.B., Desart, S., & De Witte, H. (2020). Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT)—development, validity, and reliability. International journal of environmental research and public health, 17(24), 9495.
Zych, I., Ortega-Ruiz, R., Muñoz-Morales, R. & Llorent, V.J. (2018). Dimensions and Psychometric Properties of the Social and Emotional Competencies Questionnaire (SEC-Q) in youth and adolescents. Revista Latinoamericana de Psicología, 50(2), 98-106.
01.Professional Learning and Development
Paper
A Neuro-Educational Ideal on the Market of Continuing Professional Development for Teachers; Characteristics, Consequences and Critique
Anita Norlund, Magnus Levinsson
University of Borås, Sweden
Presenting Author: Norlund, Anita;
Levinsson, Magnus
Our presentation emanates from the four-year project Following the Money - Finding Professional Learning? (The Invoice Project) funded by the Swedish Research Council (dnr 2019-03828). The overarching aim of the project is to deepen the understanding of teachers’ continuing professional development (CPD), in a decentralized and market-oriented context. The overall project started in a “following the money”-approach (Ball, 2012), where teachers' CPD was studied through data in the form of invoices. Early in the process we noticed a strong focus on children and young people as neurological beings. Further work showed that neuroscience-informed CPD seemed relatively common in Swedish schools (Levinsson et al., 2022), obviously affecting aspects of teaching and learning in the direction of a certain pedagogic ideal. We discern such patterns of pedagogic ideals as modalities, and in this case, we identified a neuro-educational ideal.
The increased influence of neuroscience in education has attracted attention internationally (see Ansari et al., 2012), as well as in Europe (see Howard-Jones, 2014) and Sweden (Levinsson & Norlund, 2018). But few studies, if any, have examined the nature of the neuro-educational content offered to teachers via CPD, or further explored its distinctive features and implications as a pedagogical ideal. Thus, the aim of our presentation is to introduce, operationalise and exemplify the characteristics of a neuro-educational modality. By ‘operationalising’ we relate to the breaking down of the modality into its sub-components. The pedagogic modality is finally discussed, and critiqued, not least regarding its consequences for teachers and students. This gives us the opportunity to connect to the conference theme regarding the value of diversity in education.
The study is framed by curriculum theory (see Young, 1971, 1998) and sociology of education. We make use of the well-known four-field model over modalities developed by the sociologist of education Basil Bernstein (1990). The model enables analyses and conclusions from a social justice perspective.
A modality is composed of several different ingredients, which not least are captured by the conceptual pair ofclassification and framing (Bernstein, 1990). The concept of classification stands for the relationship between categories (for example school subjects) or in other words the degree to which these categories are isolated from, or interfere with, each other (Bernstein, 2000, p. 99). Framing represents who, the teacher or the student, is in control over phenomena such as material selection and work pace (cf. Bernstein, 2000, p. 99). We collect another three elements from curriculum theory: i.e. selection (of teaching material or activities), organization (in the classroom) and assessment (of the students’ performance).
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedIn the overall study - the Invoice Project – 674 invoices from 2018 and 2019, were collected from the CPD accounts for elementary and upper secondary school teachers in three Swedish municipalities (municipal invoices are subject to the principal of openness in the Swedish constitution). The selected municipalities were chosen to reflect rural and urban areas with varying socioeconomic characteristics.
In total, 236 invoices were identified as representing neuro-educational CPD. But these invoices did not always supply the information needed to address the purpose of and the questions posed in this paper. Through contact information on each invoice, we asked principals, administrators, teachers, or CPD providers for additional information via e-mail or telephone. We also conducted internet searches on the websites of the relevant schools or CPD providers, and in some cases conference programs and lecturers' presentations were available. Through this approach, we were able to identify more interventions with a neuro-educational orientation, which we included in the material. This means that the empirical material that forms the basis for the operationalization of a neuro-educational modality cannot be limited to invoices, even though these constitute the main source.
To structure the empirical material and enable further analysis, we initially categorized the CPD efforts based on their main content. In this step, we identified six overarching categories that reflected content such as (i) mental and physical health, (ii) reading, arithmetic and communication difficulties, (iii) neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD:s,) and related diagnoses, (iv) pedagogical and didactical concepts, (v) gifted and talented children and (vi) motivation, grit and mindset. We then analyzed the content of each category based on the concepts and phenomena that we had collected from Bernstein's theory package and from curriculum theory respectively.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings
During the presentation, outcomes will be presented according to the organizational principle of the five analytical concepts (selection, organization, assessment, classification and framing), which, taken together, represents the operationalization of a neuro-educational modality. To give a few examples, we found desk bikes, a multitude of diagnosing programmes and mobile partition walls (for securing detachment for students) in the selection category. The belief in extensive adaptations and differentiations marks the ideal organization. The ideal way for the teacher to handle assessment is not to talk about grades but instead to focus on changing students’ mindsets via formative strategies. Most examples of framing in the empirical material represent weak framing, where the control over pace, choice etcetera is handed over to the students. Finally, as far as classification is concerned, there are examples of both weak and strong; classification between educational professions seems to be weakened while the classification between students concerning their neurological status tend to be strengthened.
The overall conclusion, based on assumptions from the mentioned four-field model, is that a neuro-educational modality brings several potential risks both for students and teachers. Most important, through its emphasis on neurological and intra-individual phenomena it appears to neglect diversity linked to social and/or cultural circumstances as well as to structurally created problems.
ReferencesAnsari, D., De Smedt, B., & Grabner, R.H. (2012). Neuroeducation: A critical overview of an emerging field. Neuroethics, 2012, 5. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-011-9119-3
Ball, S., Maguire, M, Braun, A, Perryman, J. & Hoskins, K. (2012). “Assessment Technologies in Schools:‘Deliverology’ and the ‘Play of Dominations’.” Research Papers in Education 27(5), 513–533.
Bernstein, B. (1990). Class, codes and control. Vol. 4, The structuring of pedagogic discourse. Routledge.
Bernstein, B. (2000). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: theory, research, critique. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Howard-Jones, P. (2014). Neuroscience and education: myths and messages. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 15, 817-824. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3817
Levinsson, M. & Norlund, A. (2018). En samtida diskurs om hjärnans betydelse för undervisning och lärande: Kritisk analys av artiklar i lärarfackliga tidskrifter. Utbildning & Lärande, 12(1), s. 7-25.
Norlund A., Levinsson, M. & Langelotz, L. (2022). Innehåll och pedagogiska diskurser på lärares kompetensutvecklingsmarknad. Pedagogisk forskning i Sverige (ahead of print).
Young, Michael F.D. (1971). An approach to the study of curricula as socially organized knowledge. I M. F. D. Young (Red.), Knowledge and control. Collier-Macmillan.
Young, Michael F.D. (1998). The Curriculum of the Future: From the "New Sociology of Education" to a Critical Theory of Learning. Falmer Press.
01.Professional Learning and Development
Paper
Felt Sense and Bodily Signals: An Investigation into Bodily Awareness for Teacher Learning
Colette Savage, Archie Graham
university of aberdeen, United Kingdom
Presenting Author: Savage, Colette;
Graham, Archie
This in-depth case study aims to explore the bodily lived-through experiences of one experienced primary school teacher to elicit insight into the bodily awareness they may bring to the classroom situation. By surfacing and making visible any bodily awareness we aim to further develop our understanding of the role of the body in and for teacher learning.
Three research questions guide this study:
1. What are the bodily lived experiences of an experienced teacher during a typical lesson?
2. What can be elicited from an experienced teacher’s lived experiences that make visible the bodily felt sense that underpins their classroom practice?
3. What, if anything, can we learn from the surfaced bodily felt sense elicited from an experienced teacher?
To date, there has been little research that addresses the role of the body as a source of information for helping teachers become more aware of the role of the body in and for teaching. For example, Ivinson (2012) and Shapiro and Stolz (2019) have shown that the body is implicated in teachers’ instructions, observations and pupils’ learning. However, it is not clear how such examples relate to how teachers learn through their lived-through bodily experiences. In contrast, the idea that the teacher’s body can inform reflective practice is explored by Nagamine et al (2018) who show how a pre-service teacher was able to gain new insight into their lived-through bodily experience enabling them to overcome the debilitating effects of their anxiety in the classroom. By exploring lived through bodily teacher presence in the classroom we may be able to elicit insight into how teachers might use bodily knowing to respond to the needs of their pupils.
Embodied knowing considers the body to function as “a constituent of the mind” (Fugate et al., 2019), a locus for knowing and differs from the more familiar Cartesian dualism, a way of knowing, that separates the mind from the body. Grounded in the phenomenological tradition of the lived-through body (Husserl, 2001) and Merleau-Ponty’s (2008 [1945]) phenomenology of the body, our bodies connect us to the world we inhabit, possess the capacity to be pre-reflectively immersed in the world, and are integral to understanding what it means to know the world (bodily knowing). The value of investigating the world through Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body is the opportunity to surface hitherto hidden insights about the role of the teacher’s body and the world they inhabit (Stolz, 2015) and how these insights can be applied to support teacher learning.
Realising a sense of bodily awareness enables one to experience one’s bodily sensations as, “an essential aspect of one’s lived experience” (Menzel et al. 2019, p53). By paying direct attention to bodily sensations (embodiment in mindfulness terms), it is possible to notice what Gendlin (2003) referred to as a bodily felt sense of any given situation. For Gendlin, our bodily felt sense does not announce itself through words or thoughts rather it is encountered as a “single (though often puzzling and very complex) bodily feeling” (Gendlin, 2003:32). We bring Gendin’s idea of bodily felt self into conversation with the research participant’s account of their bodily lived-through experiences and explore how this bodily awareness informed their teaching practice.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe data for the study were derived from interviews underpinned by the application of elements of mindfulness and neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). Our approach was similar to Vermersh’s (1994) explicitation interview (“L’Entretien d’Explicitation”) as cited in Tosey and Mathison (2010), which was used to guide the research participant to associate fully into the re-enactment of their bodily experiences during a typical lesson as an experienced teacher.
The interviews were conducted with the research participant, Anna (pseudonym), via a video conferencing platform on three occasions, with each interview lasting approximately 40 minutes. The first two interviews were designed to capture the lived-through bodily knowing operating internally and underpinning the external behaviours as enacted by Anna in her teaching. For example, we asked questions such as: Can you think back to what sensations you were feeling in that lesson and where in your body you feel that bodily sensation? So, can you describe how that excitement felt in your body? Was this feeling/sensation all over your body or just in your middle? The third interview provided an opportunity for Anna to reflect on the value of paying attention to the role of the body in and for her teaching. All three interviews were audio-recorded and fully transcribed by the researchers, enabling engagement with data analysis and interpretation during the data collection phase.
Our research design was operationalised in three stages. Stage 1 focused on capturing a sense of the bodily lived-through experiences encountered during a typical lesson for the research participant and was designed to respond to our first research question. Stage 2 the hermeneutic phenomenological reflection (van Manen, 1990) enabled a response to the second research question by engaging in a deeper reflection of the findings elicited from stage 1 of the research design. Finally, stage 3 responded to the third research question, by providing an opportunity for the research participant to reflect on their participation in the first two interviews and to consider how focusing on their bodily felt sense impacted on their teaching.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsOur findings from Anna’s case, show that questioning solely on moment-to-moment bodily sensations in relation to her classroom practise, brought awareness of her felt sense and bodily signals which she then chose to develop within her teaching practice. For example, it was shifts in Anna’s breathing pattern, prior to her becoming consciously aware or scanning the room, that signalled the need for her to assess what was going on in her classroom. This bodily shift resonates with the idea of felt sense as proposed by Gendlin (2003) whereby the felt sense does not reveal itself through thoughts or words. However, Anna’s experience of a bodily shift differs from Gendlin’s (ibid) “felt shift” and from the felt shift identified by Nagamine et al. (2018) which required a pre-service teacher to participate in a process for verbalising and naming their “felt sense” prior to gaining insight into their lived-through bodily experience to support their teaching.
Anna’s bodily shift in her breathing pattern was a bodily sensation that Anna did not understand prior to participation in this study, but, nevertheless, provided a signal for her to look, to scan the room, to see what was going on. The types of bodily sensations, bodily shifts and associated feelings Anna described were part of her everyday lived experience in the classroom. However, it was not until she participated in the interviews that Anna became aware of her felt sense and bodily shifts and was able to interpret these as signals her body was providing. She then chose to consider how she might use this knowledge to assist her approach to teaching.
The nature of this in-depth case study is such that further research is necessary to explore the possibilities and limitations of bringing bodily felt sense to conscious awareness for teacher learning.
ReferencesBarnacle, R. (2009). Gut instinct: the body and learning. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 41(1), 22–33.
Fugate, J.M.B., Macrine, S.L., & Cipriano, C. (2019). The role of embodied cognition for transforming learning, International Journal of School & Educational Psychology, 7(4), 274-288.
Gendlin, E.T. (2003). Focusing. Great Britain, Penguin Random House.
Husserl, E., (2001). Logical Investigations, Vol. 1. (FINDLAY, J.N. trans). London: Routledge. [Original work published 1913].
Ivinson, G. (2012). The body and pedagogy: beyond absent, moving bodies in pedagogic practice, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 33(4), 489-506.
Menzel J.E., Thompson J.K., & Levine M.P., (2019). Development and validation of the Physical Activity Body Experiences Questionnaire, Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic Guildford Press Periodicals, 83(1), 53-83.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (2008 [1945]). The Phenomenology of perception (C. Smith, Trans.). London: Routledge. (Original work published 1945)
Nagamine, T., Fujieda, Y., & Iida, A. (2018). The role of emotions in reflective teaching in second language classrooms: Felt sense, emotionality, and practical knowledge acquisition. In Emotions in second language teaching (145-163). Springer, Cham.
Shapiro, L., & Stolz, S. A. (2019). Embodied cognition and its significance for education. Theory and Research in Education, 17(1), 19–39.
Stolz, S. A. (2015). Embodied learning. Educational philosophy and theory, 47(5), 474–487.
Tosey, P., & Mathison, J. (2010). Neuro-linguistic Programming as an innovation in education and teaching. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 47(3), 317-326.
Van Manen, M., (1990). Researching Lived Experience. USA: The State University of New York.
Vermersch, P. (1994) L’entretien d’explicitation, EDF Editeur, Issy les-Moulineaux.
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