26. Educational Leadership
Paper
Portuguese Teachers’ Views of the Influence of Leadership on School and Classroom Conditions
Eva Fernandes, Maria Assunção Flores
CIEC-UM, Portugal
Presenting Author: Fernandes, Eva;
Flores, Maria Assunção
Existing international literature points to the key role of headteachers in school development and improvement. Although the literature has focused on the extent to which classroom and school conditions influence student learning, less attention has been paid to how leadership can positively influence those conditions (Leithwood & Day, 2007; Cruickshank, 2017). Headteachers' may combine transformational and instructional leadership strategies to promote school improvement (Day, Gu, & Sammons, 2016; Cruickshank, 2017). An effective integration of these approaches is closely linked to teacher commitment and school culture, contributing to enhanced student outcomes (Cruickshank 2017). In this regard, school headteachers play a crucial role on school improvement and, on improving classroom conditions.
Drawing on the work by Leithwood et al., (2006) and Day, Gu and Sammons (2016), this paper reports on findings from a 3-year research project aimed at investigating the impact of school leadership on teachers’ work and on pupils’ outcomes. The goal of this paper is to look at Portuguese teachers’ views of the impact of leadership in school and classroom conditions. The 3-year research project included three phases of data collection and the participation of a range of stakeholders (e.g. headteachers, the senior leadership team, teachers, pupils, and parents. In this paper, we focus on teachers’ views of the influence of leadership in school and classroom conditions and its impact on students’ outcomes.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThis study is part of a wider research project funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology entitled ‘IMPACT - Investigating the Impact of School leadership on Pupil Outcomes’ (PTDC/CED-EDG/28570/2017). Drawing on work by Leithwood et al., (2006) and Day, Gu and Sammons (2016), it aimed at examining leadership practices and their impact on teachers' work and on pupils’ academic outcomes. The research project was approved by the Committee of Ethics for Research in Social and Human Sciences at the University of Minho (CEICSH 009/2020) and by the DGE/Ministry of Education (Ref.ª 0555900002).
Data were collected according to three phases: i) exploratory interviews with 25 headteachers: ii) a national survey of headteachers (n=379) and key staff (n=875); iii) case studies (n=20). This paper reports on findings arising from the survey with teachers (n=841) and focus group with teachers (n=108).
The results are discussed based on the outcomes of the confirmatory factor analysis. The 'school conditions' dimension encompasses aspects such as the setting of high academic standards, teaching and learning, assessment for learning, fostering of a culture of teacher collaboration (internal collaboration), and external collaboration. The 'classroom conditions' dimension comprises considerations related to teacher workload and class size.
Content analysis was performed to analyse qualitative data and to look at emerging categories based on the semantic criterion (Esteves, 2006). Verification strategies (Creswell, 1998) were used to ensure accuracy: the research team members engaged in a process of systematic analysis of the categories and sub-categories to reduce and make sense of the data (Miles & Huberman, 1994).
The survey participants were mainly females (72.2%), with 53.7% aged over 50, in line with TALIS 2018 data indicating an average age of 50 for Portuguese teachers, and 74% of female teachers. Educational qualifications included 76% with a licenciatura's degree and 15.5% with a master's degree. Most participants teach in the 3rd cycle of basic education (23.4%) (pupils aged 12-15) and secondary education (18.9%) (students aged 16-18). The age of the participants in the focus groups (19 focus groups in total) ranged from 37 to 66 years old; 77 were female and 31 were male.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsOverall, teachers have a positive view of the impact of school leadership in enhancing both school and classroom environments. Teachers welcome the presence of leadership practices that foster high academic standards, influencing both student academic achievements and teachers' work. Additionally, teachers express agreement concerning the development of student-centred learning and assessment activities that empower students and enhance their participation in thelearning processes. There is a strong consensus on the existence of collaborative work among teachers and other professionals, both within and outside the school setting. Interestingly, quantitative data indicates a balanced view between teachers who agree and disagree on the adjustment of teachers' workload, tasks, and responsibilities. This trend is also visible in aspects related to the number of students and class size. However, these are seen as the most critical factors in teachers’ views of classroom conditions. In general, while teachers’ views are in general positive, they raise questions about the opportunities for collaboration focusing on classroom practice and about the role of supervision and assessment for learning as catalysts to improve teachers’ work and students’ learning.
These and other issues will be discussed further in the paper.
ReferencesCruickshank, V. (2017). The Influence of School Leadership on Student Outcomes. Open Journal of Social Sciences 5, 115-23. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jss.2017.59009
Day, C., Q. Gu, & Sammons, P. (2016). ‘The Impact of Leadership on Student Outcomes: How Successful School Leaders Use Transformational and Instructional Strategies to Make a Difference’. Educational Administration Quarterly 52 (2), 221-258. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161X15616863
Creswell, J. W. (1998). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five traditions. SAGE Publications.
Esteves, M. (2006). Análise de Conteúdo. In L. Lima & J. A. Pacheco (orgs.), Fazer Investigação. Contributos para a elaboração de dissertação e teses (pp. 105-126). Porto Editora.
Miles, M. B., & Huberman, M. (1994). Qualitative Data Analysis. An Expanded Source Book. SAGE Publications.
Leithwood, K. & Day. C. (2007). The Impact of Leadership on Student Outcomes. Sage.
Leithwood, K., Day, C. Sammons, P. Harris, A. & Hopkins, D. (2006). Seven Strong Claims about Successful School Leadership. London: DfES.
26. Educational Leadership
Paper
Teacher Leadership: A Review of Literature on the Conceptualization and Outcomes of Teacher Leadership
Jete Aliu, Blerim Saqipi, Fjolla Kacaniku
University of Prishtina, Kosovo
Presenting Author: Aliu, Jete
Teacher leadership, as a significant component of school change has become a topical issue in the last decades (Wenner and Campbell, 2017). In recent decades, teacher leadership has evolved from small-scale cooperation and instructional contexts to becoming a cornerstone of school reforms in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and eventually focusing on supporting accountability systems in the early 2000s. (Little, 2003). Current studies have made important contributions in the literature by identifying factors that precede teacher leadership, e.g., school structure, school climate, teacher personal characteristics, and they have also recognized the outcomes of teacher leadership, such as improved collegial relationships (e.g., Wenner and Campbell, 2017; York-Barr and Duke, 2004), enhanced teaching practices and increased student achievement (e.g., Martin and Coleman 2011). Despite such important contributions, the literature still lacks a common definition of teacher leadership which would support future research on the topic and development of teacher preparation programs. In order to develop responsibilities for teacher leadership, it is important to be clear on the definition of teacher leadership. The critique towards lacking a clear definition of teacher leader is supported by the York-Barr and Duke (2004) review which stated that the literature on teacher leadership is “largely atheoretical” (p. 291) and Wenner and Cambpell (2017) review which concluded that only 35% of articles published in the period 2004-2013 clearly state the definition they use for the term “teacher leadership” in their study. This gap in the understanding of teacher leadership necessitates additional empirical evidence to promote cohesive future research in this field. Considering the limitations in the literature, this review paper aims to add to the existing body of literature on the teacher leadership topic by understanding the current conceptualization of teacher leadership. More specifically, through the review of relevant articles, the authors will identify the definitions used for describing teacher leadership and while using the deductive method the authors will rely on the theoretical framework of Snoek et al. (2019) to understand the conceptualization of teacher leadership in the recent literature. Finally, considering the ubiquitous presence of the concept teacher leadership in the current literature, through the inductive method the authors will try to distinguish the most important outcomes of teacher leadership. Against this background, the study aims to answer the following research questions by reviewing the studies that examined teacher leadership as a central topic published in the period from 2018 to 2023:
- How is teacher leadership defined and conceptualized in the literature?
- What are the outcomes of teacher leadership as identified in the literature?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedTo answer the research questions, this study utilized a systematic review method that synthesized qualitative information while extracting and summarizing themes related to teacher leadership definition and outcomes of teacher leadership that are manifested in the existing literature. This qualitative information is combined with quantitative data, specifically descriptive data, to provide a comprehensive overview of the existing evidence related to the conceptualization of teacher leadership against the Snoek et al. (2019) theoretical framework.
To select studies for review, the authors adhered to the PRISMA approach developed by Moher et al. (2009) and applied specific inclusion and exclusion criteria. Three main themes guided the criteria, namely main focus, subject focus, and publication criteria. Firstly, studies had to primarily focus on teacher leadership to qualify for review; those only briefly mentioning teacher leadership were excluded. Secondly, eligible studies concentrated on teachers with teaching as their primary role, excluding those exploring teacher leadership from the perspective of principals or school administrators. The focus was also on K-12 teachers due to their strong classroom responsibilities. Thirdly, the studies considered for review needed to be either empirical or theoretical and peer reviewed. Policy analyses and non-peer-reviewed publications were excluded. Furthermore, eligible studies were required to have been published between 2018 and mid-2023 and be in English.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe results of this review demonstrate that there is still a lack of a common and consistent definition of teacher leadership in the literature. A clear understanding of the concept would help in better preparing prospective teachers for the new roles that the teaching profession demands for overcoming the daunting challenges that schools face nowadays. Most studies included in the review relied their work on the already existing definitions of the concept in literature. The definitions of York-Barr and Duke (2004) and Katzenmeyer and Moller (2001) were identified by the authors as the most used definitions in the studies published in the period 2018 –2023. Other studies either utilized definitions of other authors, developed their own working definitions based on the existing literature, or came up with definitions after analyzing first-hand data via qualitative or quantitative methodologies. Regardless, the studies reviewed revealed that teacher leadership is mostly conceptualized more as an informal and individual form of leadership. Whereas, the outcomes and impact teacher leadership causes can be at the school level e.g., school development, innovation and change, and transformation of school culture, at the teacher level e.g., professional development, collegial collaboration, improved instructional practice and self-efficacy, and at the student level e.g., student achievement and student motivation. This study points to the need to advance the debate on the occurrence and projection of teacher leadership within schools by combining the various variables of forms it occurs and the purposes it is meant to serve.
ReferencesHarris, A. (2003). Teacher leadership as distributed leadership: Heresy, fantasy or possibility? School Leadership & Management, 23(3), 313–324.
Harris, A. & Jones, M. (2019). Teacher leadership and educational change. School leadership & Management, 39 (2), 123–126.
Hunzicker, J. (2012). Professional development and job-embedded collaboration: how teachers learn to exercise leadership. Professional Development in Education, 38(2),267-289.
Hunzicker, J. (2019). What Makes a Teacher a Leader?. Kappa Delta Pi Record, 55(3),130-136.
Katzenmeyer, M., & Moller, G. (2009). Awakening the sleeping giant: Helping teachers develop as leaders (3rd ed.). Corwin Press.
Little, J. W. (2003). Constructions of teacher leadership in three periods of policy and reform activism. School Leadership & Management, 23, 401–419.
Martin, K., & Coleman, P. (2011). Licensing teacher leaders: The Kansas model. The Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin, 77(3), 6–9.
Snoek, M., Hulsbos, F., & Andersen, I. (2019). Teacher leadership: Hoe kan het leiderschap van leraren in scholen versterkt worden? [Teacher leadership: How can the leadership of teachers in schools be strengthened?]. Hogeschool van Amsterdam.
Wenner, J.A., & Campbell, T. (2017). The Theoretical and Empirical Basis of Teacher Leadership: A Review of the Literature. Review of Educational Research, 87(1), 134-171.
York-Barr, A. J., & Duke, K. (2004). What do we know about teacher leadership? Findings from two decades of scholarship. Review of Educational Research, 74, 255–316.
26. Educational Leadership
Paper
The Role of Headteachers in Promoting Teachers' Work Ability
Klára Harvánková, Petr Hlaďo
Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Presenting Author: Harvánková, Klára
The work of teachers has a fundamental social value because education can ensure economic growth and technical and scientific development in any society (Vedovato & Monteiro, 2018). The teaching profession is characterized by high stress and physical complaints, a high workload, relatively high absenteeism, and early retirement (Grabara et al., 2018). The current age structure of teachers indicates several problems in higher secondary education that can occur in the future. The ageing of the teachers may be linked with higher absenteeism or a general shortage of teachers in schools. These problems may be caused not only by individual factors (reduced working ability) but also by factors related to the work performed (characteristics of the job performed, working conditions) (Hlaďo et al., 2020). Thus, the ageing of the teaching population raises the question of maintaining teachers' work ability. Work ability can be defined as a person's ability to meet the demands of his or her job (Cadiz et al., 2020). Work ability is based on the balance between the worker's resources and the job demands placed on him or her (Ilmarinen et al., 2005). This definition highlights an individual's capacity to fulfil required work tasks and effectively manage job demands (Ilmarinen et al., 1997). Work ability is a dynamic process influenced by various factors, including physical and mental health, functional abilities, qualifications, professional competencies, attitudes, motivation, working conditions, job demands, and environmental factors (Tuomi et al., 2001).
Several aspects go into the work ability, which can positively and negatively influence it. For management and support work ability, the concept of age management is mainly used, which offers the perspective to support work ability at three levels, depending on the interests of stakeholders expressed and implemented. These are the individual level, the organizational level and national/regional (Novotný et al., 2014). Managing work ability and wellbeing at schools requires, among others, leadership support and commitment, effective communication, employee health awareness and engagement (Shiri & Bergbom, 2023). Although the implementation of the measures of work ability support is not systematically addressed in the school environment, it is possible to identify measures that, within the organizational level, implementation of age management lead to the promotion of work ability. The first large group consists of benefits that can be positively reflected in the promotion of health and a healthy lifestyle. The second large group consists of workplace measures that lead to an increase in job resources. These include, for example, workplace ergonomics, the provision of support from a supervisor, work organization, feedback and opportunities for further training.
Schools can then be seen as essential actors that can contribute to the reduction of work demands and workload and, at the same time, are the ones who can, through individual measures, increase work resources and thus support teachers' work capacity. McGonagle et al. (2022) note that employers can prevent excessive work exhaustion and the associated deterioration in health and wellbeing by changing aspects of work that reduce staff workload or increase work resources.
This paper aims to reflect on the crucial role of headteachers in promoting teachers´ work ability and find an answer to the research question: What is the role of headteachers in promoting teachers´ work ability?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThis research is part of a project focused on perceived work ability among lower secondary school teachers. Part of this project is aimed at the role of the headteachers and their leadership in promoting teachers' work ability. Considering the aim of the research and research questions, a qualitative approach has been chosen to bring participants' perspectives regarding how headteachers support teachers' work ability. This research design provides a rich understanding of how teachers' work ability is promoted and allows us to capture the complexity and nuances of this process.
The research sample consisted of lower secondary school headteachers in the South Moravian Region and the Vysočina Region of the Czech Republic. In the first step, 44 public lower secondary schools were randomly selected and contacted via email with a brief description of the project and the data collection procedure. Concurrently, headteachers were recruited for semi-structured interviews in the first sampling stage. In the second step, all teachers were invited to participate in the self-administered questionnaires at each school. The method of data collection was in-depth interviews. Before data collection, the interview protocol was created, containing 80 open-ended questions. The interview questions were about the characteristics of the school, school climate and relations at school, professional development of teachers, teachers' health and lifestyle, competence and job requirements, work environment and wellbeing. The interviews were conducted during October and December 2023 and lasted approximately 100 minutes. The interviews were recorded and then transcribed into text form. Interviews were analyzed using computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software ATLAS.ti. Data analysis is based on the grounded theory of Charmaz (2014) and Corbin and Strauss (2014). First, open coding was performed, focusing on data fragments. In the next step, all units were categorized, and we tried to find relationships between the categories.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsIn the interviews, we focus on how headteachers perceived the concept work ability and how they deal with interventions which can promote or maintain teachers‘ work ability. The first analysis shows that headteachers are essential in promoting teachers' work ability. In our research, headteachers across different generations perceived challenges linked with the actual young generation and their needs. They admitted the importance of developing social competencies to adapt to the changing students. Headteachers also perceived that working with parents was more demanding for teachers than working with students. They reflected the importance of their role in supporting teachers in demanding communication with parents. Our data also confirmed the high demands of the teaching profession and the risk of burnout due to stress. Headmasters perceived that they should work on these problematic issues but are limited by bureaucracy and need more time for personal leadership. They also perceived the ageing population of teachers and the health issues which relate to it. They admitted that they should focus on interventions to improve teachers' health and healthy lifestyles. They thought about more education in this field or supporting more sports activities for teachers.
On the other hand, headteachers view teaching as an individual profession. It is essential to point out that responsibility for promoting work ability lies not only on headteachers but is also an individual responsibility of teachers. Headteachers play a crucial role in setting the school environment and climate, but only with cooperation with the teachers can they promote their work ability.
ReferencesCadiz, D. M., Brady, G. M., & Truxillo, D. (2020). Workability: A metric to inform policy for an aging workforce. Public Policy & Aging Report, 30(3), 89– 94, https://doi.org/10.1093/ppar/praa016
Grabara, M., Nawrocka, A., & Powerska-Didkowska, A. (2018). The relationship between physical activity and work ability: A cross-sectional study of teachers. International Journal of Occupational Medicine and Environmental Health, 31(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.13075/ijomeh.1896.01043
Hlaďo, P., Dosedlová, J., Harvánková, K., Novotný, P., Gottfried, J., Rečka, K., Petrovová, M., Pokorný, B., & Štorová, I. (2020). Work ability among uppersecondary school teachers: Examining the role of burnout, sense of coherence, and work-related and lifestyle factors. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(24). https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17249185
Charmaz, K. (2006). Constructing grounded theory. SAGE
Ilmarinen, J., Tuomi, K., & Klockars, M. (1997). Changes in the work ability of active employees over an 11-year period. Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment and Health, 23(1), 49–57.
Ilmarinen, J., Tuomi, K., & Seitsamo, J. (2005). New dimensions of work ability. International Congress Series, 1280, 3–7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ics.2005.02.060
Novotný, P., Bosničová, N., Břenková, J., Fukan, J., Lazarová, B., Navrátilová, D., Palán, Z., Pokorný, B., & Rabušicová, M. (2014). Age Management. Jak rozumět stárnutí a jak na něj reagovat. Možnosti uplatnění Age Managementu v České republice. Asociace institucí vzdělávání dospělých.
Shiri, R., & Bergbom, B. (2023). Work Ability and Well-Being Management and Its Barriers and Facilitators in Multinational Organizations: A Scoping Review. Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland), 11(7), 978. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare11070978
Strauss, A. L., & Corbinová, J. (1999). Základy kvalitativního výzkumu. Albert
Vedovato, T. G. & Monteiro, I. (2014). Health conditions and factors related to the work ability of teachers. Industrial Health. (52), 121-128.
26. Educational Leadership
Paper
Decentring the ‘Resilient Teacher’: Exploring Interactions Between Individuals and Their Social Ecologies
Steph Ainsworth, Jez Oldfield, Carrie Adamson
MMU, United Kingdom
Presenting Author: Ainsworth, Steph;
Oldfield, Jez
Teacher attrition presents a growing concern for schools in the UK and internationally (Avalos & Valenzuela, 2016; Department for Education, 2019a). Within England, recent figures show that 59% of staff in schools considered leaving the profession in 2022 due to pressures on their mental wellbeing, and 55% of staff took concrete steps to change or leave their jobs (Savill-Smith and Scanlan, 2022). Alongside the problem of staff turnover, there are growing concerns over teacher wellbeing with a startling 81% of staff in schools reporting mental health symptoms related to their work in 2023, a 3% increase on the previous year’s figure (Education Support, 2023). Similar concerns around teacher recruitment, retention and found within Europe (e.g. European Commission, 2018). For example, in Sweden where teachers are subjected to similar pressures as those found in England due to competition and marketisation of the state school sector (Toropova et al 2021), there are major teacher shortages across age phases (European Commission, 2023) and rising teacher stress levels (Ramberg et al., 2019).
In response to these international concerns a discourse has emerged around the need to ‘build teachers’ resilience’ (Mansfield et al., 2016). Policy documents such as the Early Career Framework (Department for Education, 2019b) aim to tackle the teacher retention crisis by providing enhanced professional development to promote teacher competence and confidence. Implicit in such policies is the premise that if only we could make teachers better at their jobs, they would be ‘more resilient’ and stay within the profession. While teacher self-efficacy has indeed been shown to be an important predictor of resilience in teachers (Ainsworth & Oldfield, 2019), it is important to recognise that individual factors represent only one side of the teacher resilience problem. If teachers are to thrive (and stay) in their roles, action is needed to address levers for change within teachers’ professional environments as well as providing support to teachers at the individual level.
Within social-ecological framings of resilience, resilience is not a trait which resides within the individual, but rather is a process of interaction between factors operating at different ecological levels (e.g. the individual, the school, the broader policy landscape), which results in varying levels of positive adaptation (Kangas-Dick & O’Shaughnessy, 2020; Gu, 2018; Ungar et al, 2013). These factors influence teachers’ capacity for ‘positive adaptation’ – the extent to which they are able to adapt to the many demands of their professional role. Positive adaptation may be reflected by high levels of job satisfaction and wellbeing on the one hand, and low levels of stress, anxiety, burnout and depressive symptoms on the other. Our previous quantitative research found that contextual factors (e.g. support from leadership, workload and school culture) explained as much variance in measures of adaptation in teachers as individual factors (Ainsworth & Oldfield, 2019); however, this design was only able to explore the direct effects of predictors (like support from management and self-esteem) on resilience, and did not have sufficient statistical power to explore the interactions between them. Our recent qualitative research (Oldfield & Ainsworth, 2022) suggests that these interactions may be an important part of the resilience process, with teachers’ accounts of their professional experiences suggesting that individual factors (e.g. self-esteem) do not exist independently from the environment, and tend to be influenced by broader environmental factors (e.g. support from management and accountability frameworks).
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe current paper will investigate these interactions, reporting data from a large-scale quantitative survey distributed to teachers across England by project partners, the National Education Union and charity, Education Support. This study is part of a broader three-year project, funded as part of the ESRC Education Research Programme. The survey was designed to measure factors which previous research has suggested to be important to the resilience process in teachers at both the individual and contextual level as well as outcome measures of adaptation. 8 Individual level measures were included in the survey: self-esteem, emotional intelligence, personality, life orientation (a tendency towards optimism and pessimism), self-care, self-efficacy, independent problem solving and investment in relationships with pupils. At the contextual level 8 sub-scales were included which measured: support from management, workload, support from colleagues, school culture, perceived conflict between beliefs and practice, pupil behaviour, relationships with parents and support from family and friends. The survey also measured a number of resilience-related outcomes, including job satisfaction and burnout.
The survey set out to investigate the following research questions:
• RQ1: What is the relative contribution of individual versus contextual factors in predicting levels of adaptation (burnout, job satisfaction and wellbeing) in teachers?
• RQ2: How do individual and contextual factors interact with each other to predict levels of adaptation in teachers?
The survey results were analysed by adopting a ‘protective’ model of resilience, allowing investigation of the interactions between predictors. In this way, we moved beyond previous ‘compensatory’ models which only explored direct independent effects (Fergus & Zimmerman, 2005; Ainsworth & Oldfield, 2019). The first step of the analytic process involved relative weights analysis (Tonidandel & Le Breton, 2014), which allowed us to assess which factors explained the most variance in teacher wellbeing, job satisfaction and burnout (RQ1). This allowed us to then focus in on the a smaller subset of key predictors, which we then inputted into a series of regression models in order to investigate potential interactions between these factors in predicting the resilience-related outcomes (RQ2). Decisions around which interactions between predictors were entered into the model were informed by theoretical considerations, including insights from previous qualitative data which demonstrates potential interactions between predictors of resilience outcomes (Oldfield & Ainsworth, 2022). Mediation analyses (Hayes, 2018) were performed to investigate the indirect effects of the different individual and contextual factors on teacher resilience as well as the direct effects.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe analyses suggest that the most important predictors of job satisfaction and burnout in teachers predominantly operate at the school level rather than the individual levelThese findings adds further weight to the argument that teacher resilience should not be conceived as something which resides solely within the individual and warns against hyper-individualised framings of, and interventions for, teacher resilience.
The mediation analyses provide evidence of indirect effects on resilience-related outcomes within and between ecological levels. The findings suggest that relational approaches to promoting teacher resilience might be especially promising given that support from management and support from colleagues appear to influence teacher resilience through multiple indirect routes. For example, the variance in teacher burnout levels explained by support from management was mediated by workload, school culture, self-esteem and conflict between beliefs and practice. In other words, teachers were less likely to feel burnout in schools where there were supportive leadership practices, because these practices affected how manageable their workloads were, how positive the culture of the school felt, how good they felt about themselves and the extent to which they felt they could teach in line with their values.
The implications of the findings for developing data-driven ‘ecological’ interventions to promote teacher resilience will be discussed, including examples of how data can be used to identify possible levers for change within schools. The importance of addressing exosystemic factors (e.g. Ungar et al., 2013), e.g. policies and conditions, operating at the level of the education system as a whole (beyond the school), will also be highlighted, drawing upon evidence that these broader policy factors also drive mediating effects on teacher resilience acting through the more proximal ecological levels of the school and the individual teacher.
ReferencesAinsworth, S., & Oldfield, J. (2019). Quantifying teacher resilience: Context matters. Teaching and Teacher Education, 82, 117-128.
Avalos, B., & Valenzuela, J. P. (2016). Education for all and attrition/retention of new teachers: A trajectory study in Chile. International Journal of Educational Development, 49, 279- 290.
Department for Education (2019a). Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy. London: Department for Education.
Department for Education (2019b). Early Career Framework. London: Department for Education.
Education Support (2023) Teacher Wellbeing Index 2023. London: Education Support.
European Commission (2018). Teaching careers in Europe: Access, progression and support. Eurydice Report. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.
Fergus, S., & Zimmerman, M. A. (2005). Adolescent resilience: A framework for understanding healthy development in the face of risk. Annual Review of Public Health, 26, 399-419.
Garcia, E., & Weiss, E. (2019). The teacher shortage is real, large and growing, and worse than we thought. Economic Policy Institute. Retrieved from: https://www.epi.org/publication/the-teacher-shortage-is-real-large-and-growingand-worse-than-we-thought-the-first-report-in-the-perfect-storm-in-theteacher-labour-market-series/
Gu, Q. (2018). (Re) conceptualising teacher resilience: A social-ecological approach to understanding teachers’ professional worlds. In M. Wosnitza, F.Peixoto, S. Beltan and C.Mansfield (Ed.). Resilience in education (pp. 13-33). Springer, Cham.
Kangas-Dick, K., & O’Shaughnessy, E. (2020). Interventions that promote resilience among teachers: A systematic review of the literature. International Journal of School & Educational Psychology, 8(2), 131-146.
Mansfield, C. F., Beltman, S., Broadley, T., & Weatherby-Fell, N. (2016). Building resilience in teacher education: An evidenced informed framework. Teaching and Teacher Education, 54, 77-87.
Oldfield, J., & Ainsworth, S. (2021). Decentring the ‘resilient teacher’: exploring interactions between individuals and their social ecologies. Cambridge Journal of Education, 52(4), 409-430.
Ramberg, J., Låftman, S. B., Åkerstedt, T., & Modin, B. (2020). Teacher Stress and Students’ School Well-being: the Case of Upper Secondary Schools in Stockholm, Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 64(6), 816-830, DOI: 10.1080/00313831.2019.1623308
Savill-Smith, C., & Scanlan, D. (2022). Teacher Wellbeing Index 2022. London: Education Support.
Tonidandel, S. & LeBreton, J. M. (2014). RWA-Web -- A free, comprehensive, web-based, and user-friendly tool for relative weight analysis. Journal of Business and Psychology, 30(2), 207-216. doi: 10.1007/s10869-014-9351-z.
Toropova, A., Myrberg, E., & Johansson, S. (2021). Teacher job satisfaction: the importance of school working conditions and teacher characteristics, Educational Review, 73(1), 71-97, doi: 10.1080/00131911.2019.1705247.
Ungar, M., Ghazinour, M., & Richter, J. (2013). Annual Research Review: What is resilience within the social ecology of human development? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 54(4), 348-366.
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