Teacher Wellbeing and Implications for Leaders

For my most recent MA assignment, I chose to focus on teacher wellbeing.  For the last two years I have worked with staff to raise awareness of mental health issues in the young people we teach.  The further I have looked into this area, the more I have realised that student wellbeing and teacher wellbeing are two sides of the same coin (Roffey, 2012).  I invited staff from one school to respond to a questionnaire that sought to identify what teacher wellbeing is, to collect a snapshot of teacher wellbeing from the school and to make recommendations of next steps for SLT.  

The first issue I encountered in the research was in establishing a working definition of teacher wellbeing.  Much of the literature concluded that it was a subjective term and this almost seemed to minimise its importance and yet, as Danna and Griffith point out “an individual’s experience at work…affects the person while he or she is at work.  In addition these experiences ‘spill over’ into non-work domains.  Workers spend about one third of their waking hours at work and don’t necessarily leave the job behind…” (Danna & Griffin, 1999, p. 358).  Many of the definitions I considered focused on the negatives – what wellbeing was not, for example stress or burnout so the first thing I wanted to establish was what the teachers would perceive as wellbeing.   When analysing teachers’ definitions of wellbeing, a number of ideas or concepts were repeated in teachers’ own definitions.  Phrases such as ‘work-life balance’, ‘health – physical, emotional, mental or social’, ‘ability to cope’, sense of ‘happiness or enjoyment’ at work were mentioned by multiple respondents and phrases such as ‘control’, ‘appreciation’, ‘support’, ‘effectiveness’ and ‘sustainable’ were also mentioned albeit to a lesser extent.  From this it would appear that when staff think of teacher wellbeing, it seems that they associate wellbeing with being physically, mentally and emotionally healthy whilst managing life and work, coping with the demands of the job whilst remaining happy and effective at work. 

Many of the factors identified in the research (demand, control, support, trust, impact on lifestyle taken from Bricheno's work) were found to be a consideration for teachers when assessing their own wellbeing.  However specific demands such as workload and measures of support such as reward/recognition seem to have a greater impact on teacher wellbeing than others.  It is important to recognise the research context and acknowledge that had the research been carried out in a different school, other factors may have proved more influential.  It was recognised that the school is already doing good work in this area, teachers talked positively and confidently about different measures in place (generous PPA, good student behaviour, supportive parents, an induction programme, wellbeing sessions, access to a gym, free teas/coffees).  There were however three key areas for that I felt SLT could look at to improve their provision even further:

1.       Within-School Variation

There were discrepancies between different teachers’ experiences of workload/wellbeing.  This was seen in three ways – through the self-assessment of personal wellbeing ranging from a 2 for some staff to a 5 for others (where 1 was the worst it had ever been and 5 was the best), through the number of hours being worked outside of normal school hours ranging from 5-26 and through comments regarding different people being treated/valued differently. In terms of this feedback, workload was mentioned in terms of quantity of work, that it was easier for some colleagues than others and that different colleagues were treated differently and therefore appeared more valued.   

This could link to the leadership models put forward by Bush and Glover.  One model that is evident in the school is the distributed or participative leadership approach.  In this school, general principles are agreed at a whole school level that can then be adapted and applied at a middle leadership level.  This could explain inconsistencies in workload and expectations.  It would be beneficial to drill down further to identify if any of the people experiencing poor wellbeing and longer hours are in similar departments.  It would also be useful to work with the individuals concerned to see whether there are any individual differences that could explain the discrepancies.  If any significant differences were found between departments, the SLT at this school need to consider what they could do to reduce these differences.  They also need to consider where the idea of some staff being more valued comes from – this idea of ‘principal favourites’ is similar to that discussed by Lambersky (Lambersky, 2016, p. 394).  

2. Existing Wellbeing Programme
It is important that all staff know what is available and challenge factors that may prevent staff from accessing this support.  Whilst many teachers spoke positively and were well informed about this programme there are some areas for further consideration.  It was a concern that some people would choose not to ask for help for fear of showing vulnerability and opening themselves up to become victims of budget cuts or capability proceedings.  SLT need to look at what they can do to challenge this perception, ensuring there is trust around these programmes.  They also need to tackle the concern that the first point of support for staff is a member of staff and this is preventing some people from accessing support that is needed.  They also need to consider whether the people who most need this support are accessing support.  There were members of staff reporting that their wellbeing is poor.  What can be done to ensure these staff are being supported? 

3. Praise
This requires leaders ensuring that staff feel rewarded/recognised.  The headteacher of this school ensures that all members of staff are praised in the weekly bulletin for any work that goes above and beyond and yet a number of staff feel that they are not recognised.  It may be that staff require praise on a more small-scale level.  Lambersky found that for many teachers, being acknowledged by their principal (which could take up much of their time) was a major influence on their desire to commit in the future (Lambersky, 2016, p. 394).  Whilst public praise is appreciated, it may be that smaller, more genuine praise is key to supporting staff as Lambersky points out, praise is most effective when the “gesture appeared genuine and more importantly specific not generic” (Lambersky, 2016, p. 387).    

There is an additional area to consider which is the wellbeing of leaders themselves and the example that this may set to other staff. It is worth noting from Beatty’s research that often principals who are doing a good job of looking after staff wellbeing sometimes neglect their own – as she reports, indications of threat to their (principal’s) wellbeing, e.g. high blood pressure, exhaustion, stress management, means that attention to their own needs continues to be an important part of learning (Beatty, Leadership and Teacher Emotions, 2011), reinforcing the importance of role modelling wellbeing.  Some of the staff at this school who work the longest hours and report the poorest wellbeing are in positions of middle/senior leadership – what message is this sending to other staff? 

This was a genuinely interesting and enjoyable topic to research and is something that I think I will explore further through my dissertation - there are a number of questions raised by this research that would be worth exploring in greater depth.  Firstly, the results reflect the experiences of approximately half of the staff.  It may be that those teachers who were most struggling with workload were least likely to have the capacity to complete the questionnaire.  For this research to be truly meaningful, it would reflect the experiences of all staff in the school.  It would be interesting to explore the differences between staff within the same context to explore why there is such difference.  Is this due to a distributed leadership model that has introduced some inconsistencies within the school?  Or are there individual differences that more effectively explain these differences? This could link to the claim that ‘teachers not only suffer from workload problems but also create them…” (Timperley & Robinson, 2000, p. 47), an observation that may explain variance between teachers and faculties within schools and this would be an interesting area to explore further.  It is also the case that many of the findings of this study do not reflect the wider themes in the literature however this could be due to the setting in an outstanding school or the excellent behaviour of students which may not be the norm in all schools. It would be interesting to compare the experiences of teachers in different contexts but similar roles to see how much effect these factors could have.

References:

• Beatty, B. (2011). Leadership and Teacher Emotions. In C. Day, & J. Lee, New Understandings of Teacher's Work (pp. 217-242). Springer Netherlands.
• Bricheno, P., Brown, S., & Lubansky, R. (2009). Teacher Wellbeing: A Review of the Evidence. Teacher Support Network Services.
• Bush, T., & Glover, D. (2003). School Leadership: Concepts and Evidence. NCSL.
• Bush, T., & Glover, D. (2014). School leadership models: what do we know? School Leadership & Management, 34:5,, 553-571.
• Danna, K., & Griffin, R. (1999). Health and Well-Being in the Workplace: A Review and Synthesis of the Literature . Journal of Management 25(3), 357-384.
• Lambersky, J. (2016). Understanding the human side of school leadership: principals impact on teachers' morale, self-efficacy, stress amd commitment. Leadership and Policy in Schools 15(4), 379-405.
• Leithwood, K., & Beatty, B. (2008). Leading with teacher emotions in mind. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
• Roffey, S. (2012). Pupil wellbeing - Teacher wellbeing: Two sides of the same coin? Educational and Child Psychology 29(4), 8-17.
• Timperley, H., & Robinson, V. (2000). Workload and the professional culture of teachers. Educational Management & Administration 28:1, 47-62.