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Key points
- More than half of K-12 teachers, even more than in 2020, report feeling burned out at work.
- Self determination theory (SDT) and positive education can help support teachers.
- The positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment model is flexible.
- Values in action character strengths model helps teachers address both strengths and weaknesses.
This is the second of a two-part series.
The most recent Gallup survey on burnout found that 44 percent of those working at schools serving students and teens (K-12)—including 52 percent of K-12 teachers—always or very often felt burned out at work, and this rate had worsened since the pandemic. 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.
In Part I of this series, Melanie Hodges, MAPP, of the University of Melbourne, shared findings from her recent literature review on the gap between research and practice when it comes to teacher well-being. Here, Hodges goes into greater detail about what changes can offer hope to educators struggling to thrive in such a difficult profession.
Jenny Grant Rankin: You have studied self-determination theory (SDT) (a psychological framework proposing we have innate needs that are essential for our motivation and well-being) and positive education (integrating well-being and life-skills training with more traditional academic content). How can these be applied to better support teachers?
Melanie Hodges: In looking at SDT, the mini-theory that I would consider mainly with this is basic needs theory [see the work of Abraham Maslow for more on this]. Teachers always want to be seen as competent and autonomous and have relatedness. If teachers' needs for these things are met within their teaching practice and they are not directed to be overly uniform, teachers are then partway onto the path of positive education. By allowing these simple needs to be met, teachers are beginning to job craft their own expertise within their profession: the expertise that we studied at university for and have a passion for. Teaching is becoming extremely conservative again, to the point where we teachers fear opening our mouths in case we get reprimanded, but kids today are finding out information and saying things that they learn from social media that are far beyond anything even the most conservative parents could imagine.
What did you learn about the positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment model (PERMA) (a framework for flourishing via the words that spell its acronym) or values in action (VIA) character strengths model (a classification of 24 universal character strengths) that can offer staff further support?
One of the main things that struck me with PERMA and VIA was that they don’t have to be used in their entirety to still be helpful. For me, it was actually because of PERMA that I applied for the master of applied positive psychology (MAPP) in the first place.
When considering what each thing means within PERMA, teachers can consider how one of those things might work for that day. (For example, "What is a positive emotion for the day that you had?" "Was there some engagement that you felt?") With VIA, it can help to understand what strengths we have (and how we can use them) but also to work with the ones at the bottom of the list to revitalize ourselves in some way. Just as with PERMA, we do not need to use every single strength at once. In fact, one suggestion is to look at the lower strengths and pick one, then work with it for a week or two to see how it can be improved. See what happens.
For me, I made a PERMA goal to apply for the MAPP. I did this two years ago. The goal was simply to apply. It seemed like a small goal at the time. When I did apply, I didn’t really expect to get accepted, especially by Melbourne University. However, I did and next weekend I will graduate (I worked full-time and studied full-time, which I do not recommend).
What can schools do about obstacles that face their efforts to close the gap between research and practice?
Well-being in schools is not a quick fix. What I have found, though, is that the research on burnout and well-being for teachers has revealed an ongoing concern since the 1970s (since I was born). There are multitudes of papers on the need to recognize the well-being of teachers from early childhood to university classrooms, and there is an understanding that this is imperative. Right now we are seeing a universal teaching crisis: globally there is a shortage of teachers. This is not only a concern since the pandemic; it has been a growing concern for the past 15 years as we have seen the baby boom generation begin to retire. At the same time, the expectations of administration work and the ideation of proving ourselves as teachers continue to grow. These components affect teachers’ well-being.
Ideally, administration matters need to be cut from teachers’ workloads. Teachers became teachers to teach, not to write things up in triplicate that get filed away and never looked at. It also helps to offer teachers well-being interventions to learn, instead of forcing well-being interventions onto teachers and making well-being feel like a “waste of time” to cause resentment.
Finally, school leaders need to listen, and allow teachers to sit and have a conversation over a well-made cup of tea and cake. Teachers need time to debrief. One thing I have learned, not only as a teacher who survived crisis situations and burnout but also through my own research in education, is that there is often no formal debriefing for teachers. We just get on with the job.
