A Framework of Demands on Educators
Over the past year, Brass Tacks Innovations has been exploring what it might take to reduce attrition of the teacher workforce across US schools. While many ideas, from salary increases to changes in the organizational structure of schools, have been promoted, few suggestions have been offered about how we can first get a better holistic understanding of the demands on teachers causing the increases in attrition.
As Lewin once said, nothing is as practical as a good theory, and we have been using the Job Demands-Resources (JDR) theory to try and gain a more insightful perspective on the teacher attrition issue. In short, the JDR theory centers on the worker's energy and how an imbalance between demands and resources can send people down the health impairment or stress/burnout path.
On the surface, this theory makes strong conceptual sense, but in reality what do we mean by a demand, and what kinds of demands are our educators facing today that may be causing greater stress, burnout, and their eventual attrition? This post aims to explore the concept of demands and give school leaders and others a framework to analyze this problem at a deeper level.
Demands
All professions and the work they do require energy to perform. Whether you work in a bank, retail store, or restaurant, build houses, or code computers for a living, all these different forms of work require energy. Teaching and leading schools, however, present specific and different risk factors associated with energy depletion caused by different demands. The technical definition of a job demand is those "physical, psychological, social, or organizational aspects of a job that require sustained physical and psychological (cognitive and emotional) effort or skill, and are therefore associated with certain physiological or psychological costs" (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007). Anything that requires energy is a demand, and the more demands we have placed on us or self-imposed, the more energy we use.
To better understand the demands on teachers, Brass Tacks did a major review of current research and found several different demands that can be categorized into four dimensions. These four dimensions provide a framework for analyzing which demands, in addition to the everyday work of teaching, may be causing excess stress and burnout.
Teacher Personality: All people, including teachers, are born with certain individual differences in personality traits that make them more or less prone to conceiving situations as stressful. Along with other psychological characteristics linked to teacher success, the Big Five model of personality has been used to predict numerous life and educational outcomes. The Big Five model includes five personality factors: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. In a recent meta-analysis of 298 different studies, the trait of neuroticism, or being more prone to negative emotions and anxious or depressive tendencies, was shown to be most positively related to stress. In short, some educators will naturally be more prone and have greater reactions to stressors in schools.
Personal Demands: While we would love it if educators would direct all of their energy toward teaching, all educators also have a life outside of school that demands time and energy. The surveyed research shows that younger teachers struggle to balance the demands of raising a young family and their careers. More experienced teachers may struggle with balancing health issues and trying to give the same energy to their teaching as when they were younger. Many other teachers struggle to balance the emotional demands between home and work and create a separation between the two. All of these demands can and do detract from the teacher's energy.
Classroom Demands: Four major demands emerged from our review of the research, which have created excess pressure on teachers. First, many educators have felt a loss of autonomy with the increasing demand for high-stakes testing and expectations for increased student achievement. Minimizing teachers' autonomy has decreased feelings of control and self-determination, increasing stress. Second, the increased need for student management and support in the classroom since the pandemic has increased the need for teacher behavioral management skills, also resulting in excess stress. Third, expectations for greater academic success and student support have resulted in seemingly endless changes and adaptations of curriculum, instruction, and structures requiring extra time and energy. Fourth, when multiplied together, the previous three increases in classroom demands generate ongoing emotions from anger to sadness that contribute to increased stress and reductions of energy.
Workplace Demands: Outside of the classroom, teachers exist in a work environment that may sometimes not be as hospitable as necessary to support teachers. Conditions like unsupportive leadership, peer conflict and parental issues also become perceived as demands on the emotional energy of a teacher. Coupled with the disciplinary environment, pace of change, and extra duties, the demands of the workplace can further limit the energy teachers need for working with students.
Conclusion
Teaching has been seen as challenging for many years, and the demands of being an educator have "certain physiological or psychological costs" that, when taken to the extreme, can cause health issues and burnout, leading to the decision to leave the field. However, the solutions to this problem have been narrow in focus and uncompromisingly short-sighted. To honestly begin solving this crisis in US schools, policymakers and leaders need deeper insight into how the demands placed on teachers lead to an avalanche of people exiting the field and why fewer, younger people want to replace them. This framework shows that personality, personal demands, classroom demands, and workplace demands act in tandem with a multiplicative effect on teachers' energy and health, and only when these demands are lessened or balanced by other resources will we retain more of our teachers.
Brass Tacks is currently working to validate a survey instrument that can help schools or school districts use this framework to gain insights into teacher perception of the demands. If you would like to learn more about this instrument or reducing demands, please contact us.