Discovering Differential Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Education Workforce
Start Date
28-6-2021 9:15 AM
End Date
28-6-2021 10:00 AM
Topic
Stress and Adapting to New Technology
Session Chair
Masahiro Yamamoto
Abstract
Important relationships between public health and education sectors remain under-developed due to a potent combination of public policy silos including separate organizations and specialized professions. This situation is unfortunate because the health status of students and families is a social determinant of educational outcomes. Reciprocally, educational outcomes, manifested during adulthood as a potent combination of employment and socio-economic status, are a social determinant of individual and family health (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2019). Indeed, the import of educational outcomes for the prevention of health disparities is illuminated by a critical finding: For every life saved by specialized health and medical interventions, seven more could be saved by improved education outcomes (Ibid). Because health disparities and education-related disparities are intertwined, research focused on their relations is timely. This mixed method study sought to illuminate occupational stress, job satisfaction, and performance adaptation disparities of leaders and educators working in districts and schools serving different subpopulations of students (i.e. ethnically, linguistically, and socioeconomically) and in different types of communities (i.e. urban, suburban, rural) in New York state. Our interdisciplinary research team was guided by the following research questions: 1. To what extent and how do school leaders and teachers experience stress in response to covid-19 disruptions? 2.To what extent and how do school leaders and teachers indicate a change in job satisfaction in response to covid-19 disruptions? and 3. To what extent and how do school leaders and teachers indicate changes in their work or personal life in response to covid-19 disruptions? This analysis focused on a subset of survey questions focused on stress and intent to leave the profession gathered from 16 schools and highlights analysis of open-ended responses from two schools. The survey findings indicated that educators’ stress and intent to leave varies across schools serving different percentages of economically disadvantaged students. But, the relationship between educator stress and rates of economic disadvantage are not linear. Qualitative analysis of the open ended survey responses indicated that school 6 is a positive outlier (i.e. relatively low intentions to leave and low levels of stress) whereas educators from school 1 indicated they are more likely to leave their job and have experienced relatively higher levels of stress. A notable contrast in these two settings was with regard to how the community, district and school leaders relate to each other with School 1 staff expressing being insufficiently supported by both community and leaders, whereby in School 6, while stress was evident, a general sense of community and leader support was evident. While this study is still ongoing, one clear conclusion from this preliminary analysis is that the pandemic has exacerbated some of the challenges facing leaders and educators serving more economically disadvantaged students and that community context and community-school relations appear to have impacted educator levels of stress, job satisfaction, and adaptations. This research promises guidance for education officials, health officials, and public policy leaders as they wrestle with pandemic-related challenges.
Author Bio
(Presenter)
Kristen Campbell Wilcox is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Policy and Leadership, University at Albany, State University of New York and Research and Development Director of the research-practice partnership called NYKids. Her research focuses on identifying and describing the characteristics of schools and districts that successfully close opportunity gaps among socioeconomically, linguistically, and culturally diverse learners in P-12 school settings. She has specialized expertise and knowledge on culturally responsive curriculum and pedagogy.
Francesca T Durand, PhD is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at Russell Sage College, in the department of Educational Leadership, Esteves School of Education, in Albany NY and is affiliated with the University at Albany, NY Kids (https://ny-kids.org/) as a researcher. She teaches research methods and leadership theory to P-16 education leaders. Dr. Durand’s research focus lies in cradle-to-career policy at the state and national level and understanding the impacts of critical discourse on policy conversations, development, and implementation. In addition, Durand studies the roles and practices of system leadership throughout P-12 schools and the impacts of decision-making, collaboration, communication, and trust. Previous research includes studies on the impacts of the Regents Reform Agenda in K-8 schools in New York State, development of school improvement tools for NYSED, and comparative studies of promising practices in positive outlier schools. Durand’s current research focuses on the impact of COVID-19 on the educator workforce, educational equity in odds-beating high schools, and data-driven instructional changes in K-8 schools.
Email: duranf@sage.edu Phone: 518-292-1835
Lawson is an interdisciplinary scholar who specializes in child and family well-being—with special interest in innovative institutional designs structured to assist and support vulnerable people who reside in challenging places. Owing to his international, national, and local work with state social service agencies, state departments of education, school systems, and social-health service agencies, Hal is known as an outreach and engagement scholar. His publications, research grants, contracts, and consultations have been distributed across four fields—Education, Social Welfare, Public Health and Kinesiology. Hal’s work over the past 20 years has turned toward four related priorities: (1) Systems thinking and perspectives; (2) The system of professions (and their companion organizations and policy sectors) as a social determinant of health, well-being, and institutional performance; (3) Imperatives for interdisciplinary research and interprofessional education with particular attention to relations among education, social welfare, and public health; and (4) Workforce research and development, particularly performance adaptation, desirable retention as well as preventable turnover, and secondary traumatic stress. Equity ideals and distributive justice values have been mainstays.
Aaron Leo, PhD Postdoctoral Associate, NYKIDS
Aaron Leo is a cultural anthropologist whose research focuses on the education of first-generation immigrants and refugees. His scholarly interests center around social class disparities among new arrivals and the ways in which newcomers manage pressures to assimilate.
Kathryn Schiller (Ph.D. Sociology, University of Chicago) is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational Administration & Policy Studies. She is also affiliated with the Department of Sociology, an Associate of the Center for Social and Demographic Analysis, and affiliated with the Nelson A. Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy. In addition to sociology of education, Dr. Schiller teaches courses in applied statistics and research methods for both researchers and educational leaders. Her research has explored the role of schooling in the development of human capital focusing on how organizational structures and social networks shape individuals’ developmental trajectories. She was a co-investigator for Adolescent Health & Academic Achievement (AHAA), a $5 million research project funded by the National Institutes of Health, the US Department of Education, and the National Science Foundation. An education component for the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, results from AHAA detailing links between adolescents’ social relationships, academic experiences throughout high school, and health in young adulthood were published in leading research journals including Sociology of Education, Educational Evaluation & Policy Analysis, American Journal of Education, and Journal of Educational Leadership. She participates regularly in national and state-funded research, including the 2005 National Mathematics Curriculum Study (National Center for Education Statistics) that provided the first detailed analysis of Algebra I and Geometry curricula across the nation linked to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Much of Dr. Schiller’s current research focuses on the role of school leaders and adaptations by teachers when implementing high stakes systemic reforms (e.g., Common Core Learning Standards and Annual Professional Performance Reviews) or on approaches to mentoring novice teachers about promoting racial justice in their classrooms. Two of these projects explore the impact of pandemic disruptions on educators’ work conditions and ability to meet their and students’ needs.
Document Type
Extended Abstract
Discovering Differential Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Education Workforce
Important relationships between public health and education sectors remain under-developed due to a potent combination of public policy silos including separate organizations and specialized professions. This situation is unfortunate because the health status of students and families is a social determinant of educational outcomes. Reciprocally, educational outcomes, manifested during adulthood as a potent combination of employment and socio-economic status, are a social determinant of individual and family health (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2019). Indeed, the import of educational outcomes for the prevention of health disparities is illuminated by a critical finding: For every life saved by specialized health and medical interventions, seven more could be saved by improved education outcomes (Ibid). Because health disparities and education-related disparities are intertwined, research focused on their relations is timely. This mixed method study sought to illuminate occupational stress, job satisfaction, and performance adaptation disparities of leaders and educators working in districts and schools serving different subpopulations of students (i.e. ethnically, linguistically, and socioeconomically) and in different types of communities (i.e. urban, suburban, rural) in New York state. Our interdisciplinary research team was guided by the following research questions: 1. To what extent and how do school leaders and teachers experience stress in response to covid-19 disruptions? 2.To what extent and how do school leaders and teachers indicate a change in job satisfaction in response to covid-19 disruptions? and 3. To what extent and how do school leaders and teachers indicate changes in their work or personal life in response to covid-19 disruptions? This analysis focused on a subset of survey questions focused on stress and intent to leave the profession gathered from 16 schools and highlights analysis of open-ended responses from two schools. The survey findings indicated that educators’ stress and intent to leave varies across schools serving different percentages of economically disadvantaged students. But, the relationship between educator stress and rates of economic disadvantage are not linear. Qualitative analysis of the open ended survey responses indicated that school 6 is a positive outlier (i.e. relatively low intentions to leave and low levels of stress) whereas educators from school 1 indicated they are more likely to leave their job and have experienced relatively higher levels of stress. A notable contrast in these two settings was with regard to how the community, district and school leaders relate to each other with School 1 staff expressing being insufficiently supported by both community and leaders, whereby in School 6, while stress was evident, a general sense of community and leader support was evident. While this study is still ongoing, one clear conclusion from this preliminary analysis is that the pandemic has exacerbated some of the challenges facing leaders and educators serving more economically disadvantaged students and that community context and community-school relations appear to have impacted educator levels of stress, job satisfaction, and adaptations. This research promises guidance for education officials, health officials, and public policy leaders as they wrestle with pandemic-related challenges.
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The recording of this presentation ends at 1:16:00