Teacher Well-Being: Gaps Between Research and Practice

Elisa Ventur/Unsplash

Elisa Ventur/Unsplash, used with permission

This is the first of a two-part series.

Many guessed teacher burnout peaked during the pandemic’s scramble to remote learning in 2020, but schools' burnout rate has instead widened since then. A Gallup survey of thousands found that in 2020, 36 percent of those working at schools serving students and teens (K-12) felt “always” or “very often” burned out at work, but Gallup’s most recent findings were that the situation has worsened considerably: 44 percent of K-12 workers (and 52 percent of K-12 teachers) now feel burned out.

Worse, K-12 schools have the worst burnout rate of any industry, and the next closest is that of another subset of education: college and university staff, landing in second place for professional burnout. While this was a U.S. study, the problem exists worldwide, and research from abroad offers help to all. With education outpacing every other industry in burnout, teacher well-being is a more important research topic than ever. Yet is that research being applied?

Melanie Hodges, MAPP, of the University of Melbourne has conducted an extensive literature review on the topic, completed just this year. I had the chance to interview Hodges about her latest findings and how they can help educators and students moving forward.

Jenny Grant Rankin: How did your own professional experiences inspire and prepare you to cover this topic?

Melanie Hodges: Having been through burnout due to overextending my professional boundaries and not understanding that the word “No” can be a single sentence, I looked around and saw that underneath the professional veneer that teachers carry, there is the same pattern of thought. The pattern that leads us to continue to allow work to take over our nights, weekends and holidays. The last thought before we finally go to sleep is often about what we need to do the next day and which kid we need to check in on, or which assessment task needs to be re-assessed for the following year, rather than what can I do for myself so I can get a good night’s sleep just for once.

Burnout is a black hole that can suck the very soul out of a person before they even realize it has happened. We will ask others if they are OK, but we rarely ask ourselves if we are doing well.

JGR: You mention that being well is not something universities cover as they prepare students for the teaching profession. How can universities do a better job in this area?

MH: Universities do a fantastic job teaching the theory of teaching, giving the mechanics behind what is going on. However, until a teacher is in front of a class with students coming at them—metaphorically or physically—they don’t know what they are going to do. Going into a "practicum" is when student teachers first meet teachers as a professional. In some regards, this can be a bit backward. Maybe some universities need to invite teachers to them to give guest lectures about the realities of teaching.

Many first-time student teachers come to us thinking that they know the realities because they were once in a school, not too long ago, so they “know what it’s like to be a teacher.” But that does not really prepare them.

Universities also need to prepare students for maintaining their well-being. As a profession, we are probably one of the longest-running ones and yet we still don’t have the resources for teachers to maintain their own well-being. We have to learn how to do this ourselves. If we start at the university level, maybe we break this barrier earlier on.

JGR: What do teachers report as the main issues affecting their well-being at work?

MH: Time. Workloads. Administration work that has taken over our jobs. Support from the upper echelons. Something more than a fact sheet would be great.

To continue reading, see Part II of this interview.