This study examined teachers' occupational well-being by identifying profiles based on teachers' self-ratings of work engagement as well as work-related effort and reward. It also did so by examining ...whether the identified subgroups differed with respect to teachers' self-reported occupational stress and emotional exhaustion as well as with respect to work-related resources such as the individual resource of work meaningfulness and the leader-level resource of the leader-follower relationship. The participants in the study were 321 Finnish elementary school teachers. The data were collected in spring 2021, that is, at the time when the COVID-19 pandemic was present, yet there were no national school closures. Three groups of teachers were identified with latent profile analysis: (1) teachers recognized as being poorly engaged with the highest effort and lowest reward (4.7%); (2) teachers recognized as being averagely engaged with higher effort than reward (32.1%); and (3) teachers recognized as being highly engaged with higher reward than effort (63.2%). The subsequent analyses examining the differences among the profile groups revealed, for example, that each profile group differed with respect to the individual resource of work meaningfulness and profile groups 2 and 3 differed with respect to the leader-level resource of the leader-follower relationship. Thus, the findings indicate that there are differences in the ways in which teachers are able to benefit from the work-related resources and how they cope with job-related demands during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Understanding the factors related to teacher burnout helps in creating schools which foster teachers’ job satisfaction and the delivery of high-quality education. We studied teacher burnout and its ...three subdomains across several teacher-, student-, and organisation-level variables, including teacher category, class size, number of students with support needs, attitudes towards inclusive education, and availability of support. The participants were 4567 Finnish primary school teachers consisting of 2080 classroom teachers, 1744 subject teachers, 438 special-class and 305 resource room teachers. Several associations between teacher burnout and the background variables were observed and recommendations made based on these results.
•The burnout profile differed between teacher categories.•Burnout was highest among subject teachers, lowest among special education teachers.•Class size had a minimal association with teachers’ burnout.•Students with special needs had a small association with teacher burnout.•Availability of additional help was associated with lower level of teacher burnout.
The present study aimed to investigate elementary school principals’ self-reported causes of work-related stress, their coping strategies to deal with stress and the support they need for their ...leadership. Seventy-six principals filled in the questionnaire, which included open-ended questions. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyse the data. The results showed that the main sources of stress were workload, interpersonal conflicts, a lack of resources and internal pressures. Moreover, principals used emotion-focused, problem-focused and social coping to deal with stress. Additionally, principals reported a need for problem-focused support and social support for their leadership. The results revealed the importance of social support and coping for principals’ occupational wellbeing. A more intimate approach to principals’ perceptions about the causes of occupational stress, their coping strategies and the support they need provides opportunities to consider diverse personal requirements, which may be fundamental in promoting principals’ occupational wellbeing.
This study examined profiles of teachers’ occupational well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data were collected from 279 Finnish primary school teachers during the spring of 2020. Four groups ...of teachers were identified by using Latent Profile Analysis: 1) teachers with mediocre stress and work engagement (34.4%); 2) teachers with mediocre stress and lowest work engagement (11.5%); 3) teachers with highest stress and work engagement (26.5%); and 4) teachers with lowest stress and highest work engagement (27.6%). The findings indicated that teachers’ occupational well-being was individually constructed, and there was a diversity with ways how negative and positive aspects of occupational well-being were drawn into patterns. The profile groups were further analyzed with respect to teachers’ experiences of emotional exhaustion, recovery from work, and interactional styles of teaching. The results revealed that during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic many teachers experienced occupational stress as well as some increase in stress due to the pandemic. In addition, the findings provided new insights concerning how teachers’ work engagement was perhaps not severely affected during the first few months of the pandemic, and on how different teaching styles were associated specifically with different aspects of occupational well-being.
This qualitative interview-based study draws on the reported experiences of students and teachers to explore how agency and entrainment resource and constrain each other in joint music-making. The ...participants were 23 students of Grades 6 and 11 music teachers from different primary schools. The qualitative content analysis of the 11 student pair interviews and 11 one-to-one teacher interviews indicated that experiences of music-related interpersonal entrainment intertwine with different dimensions of agency. In the analysis, four themes were identified as follows: presence, belonging, safety, and continuity. These findings provide insights into the relationship between agency and entrainment in classroom-based joint music-making and provide a novel lens through which to examine the complementary experiences of students and teachers. This study builds bridges between the concepts of agency and entrainment in the context of music education, offering theoretical clarification as to how and why joint music-making can be considered an intersubjective activity that fosters group cohesion and social interaction. The findings further present a view of the constitutive nature of the relationship among agency, entrainment, and intersubjectivity in joint music-making. The findings offer educators concrete grounds for using joint music-making as a platform for an agency.
Student–teacher relationships are crucial for adolescents’ adjustment in the school context. The aim of the present study was to examine the role of teacher closeness in academic emotions and ...achievement among adolescents with and without learning difficulties during the first year in lower secondary school. Students’ learning difficulties (LDs) were identified based on tested reading and math skills. In addition, students evaluated their teacher relationships and rated academic emotions in literacy and math domains. The results indicated that higher teacher closeness was related to increasing positive emotions and increasing literacy achievement during seventh grade, whereas lower levels of teacher closeness were associated with increasing learning-related anger and boredom. The results were mostly similar for students with and without LDs, which indicates that students in general benefit from close teacher relationships during the first year in lower secondary school.
The agency of primary school students has been studied increasingly in recent years; yet, we know relatively little about student agency in music educational settings or how students experience their ...participation in joint musical action. This study explores sixth-grade students’ experiences of their agency in whole-class playing. Qualitative content analysis of 11 pair interviews identified vulnerability as an essential element of participating in whole-class playing, highlighting the intrinsically emotional nature of the process, the immediacy of the musically shared moment and the safe place of entrainment. This study elucidates the enactment of agency and the resources facilitating and limiting agency within the context of whole-class playing from the perspective of students themselves.
This study investigated the cross-lagged associations between teacher-student relationships and problem behaviors in a sample of 440 Finnish students (half of them identified as being at risk of ...reading difficulties). The degree to which these associations were moderated by a child’s gender, academic performance, risk for reading difficulties, parental education, and having the same teacher over 2 years was examined. The teachers evaluated the students’ problem behaviors and reported closeness and conflict with a particular student. The results showed that the higher the students scored on externalizing problems in Grade 4, the more conflict teachers reported 2 years later. Moderator analyses revealed that internalizing problems predicted higher levels of closeness for boys only. Conflict predicted internalizing problems among students who had the same teacher across the 2 years. The results emphasize the importance of investigating the transactional links in different subgroups.
The study investigated the mediating role of teachers' psychological detachment between successive days' job stress and negative affect. Fifty-seven Finnish teachers answered to a mobile diary four ...times a day on two successive workdays assessing their negative affect, three times a day assessing their job stress and once a day after work assessing their psychological detachment from work. Two-level modeling on both the between individual level and within day level was used to test the mediational model. The data supported the mediational model where teachers' job stress hinders their psychological detachment, which again increases their negative affect and job stress on the subsequent day. On the basis of our results teachers' occupational health interventions intended to reduce their job stress and support their psychological detachment from work are desirable. In addition, robust work-home segmentation norms within schools are suggested to support teachers' psychological detachment from work.
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