As part of my doctoral research, I’m looking at ways to help teachers stay well, stay motivated and stay teaching. (If you’re interested in finding out more about this project, sign up here). In a recent research review for Schools Week, I described two interventions which reduced burnout. In this post, I want to dig a little deeper into a couple of theories explaining why people keep going under pressure. Providing effective support depends on knowing what helps teachers feel motivated, positive and supported. This is work in progress, so I’d welcome thoughts and suggestions about what I’ve missed and what I should read next.
Weighing up demands and resources
The Job-Demands Resources model explains motivation and stress in the workplace by categorising all features of a job as either demands on the employee, or resources supporting them (for a useful review see Bakker and Demerouti, 2017). Demands are aspects of the job that require sustained effort and take a toll on us: for example, teaching all day, struggling with students’ behaviour and finding the printer has no paper. Resources are aspects of the job that help us manage demands, achieve our goals and develop ourselves: for example, feedback, professional learning, and a stimulating timetable. Demands exhaust us – and are associated with increased absence and burnout; resources engage and motivate us.
Reducing harmful demands is important, but increasing resources lifts our motivation and our performance (Bakker and Demerouti, 2017). Resources allow us to cope with the demands of the job without suffering exhaustion. They help us tailor our work to our skills – altering our role to do more of what we enjoy, for example (this is known as job crafting). And they matter most when demands are highest: the more we need them, the more they help. So what makes a resource, and how can we get more of them?
What resources help us deal with the job’s demands?
The simplest way to categorise resources may be to use Self-Determination Theory (Ryan and Deci 2000), which suggests that people are motivated, energised and become part of a social environment when they have:
- Competence – A feeling of (increasing) competence increases our willingness to take on challenges and success in doing so (Bandura, 1982). Professional development opportunities and feedback may help us to improve and to believe that we can cope with our demands.
- Relatedness – Feeling like we belong to a group is highly motivating; social support provides practical and psychological benefits.
- Autonomy – Recently-published research suggest that “Teacher autonomy is strongly associated with improved job satisfaction and a greater intention to stay in teaching (Worth and Van den Brande, 2020, p.4).”
Two other possible resources are purpose – a belief that we are doing something worthwhile – and personal traits, like optimism (Bakker and Demerouti, 2017).
What boosts our resources?
Boosting our (or our colleagues’) resources means recognising or creating more of the things that help. For example:
- Identifying successes boosts our feeling of competence – reviewing a lesson identifying what went right, not just what went wrong, may help. Seeing our peers succeed increases our belief that we can do so too (Bandura, 1982): regular slots in which we see colleagues teach, or they share their successes, may help.
- Relatedness and social support help, but one recent study in schools found that this wasn’t something teachers pursued when they tried to increase their resources (Van Wingerden, Bakker and Derks, 2017). We may try to create time and opportunities to catch up with, and collaborate with, colleagues.
- Teachers have less autonomy over their work than similar professionals (Worth and Van den Brande, 2020): that report suggests professional development is a good place to offer autonomy; I wonder whether recognising, emphasising and welcoming how much autonomy most teachers have in their classroom might help.
- A reminder why we’re doing something (from a leader or from those benefiting from our work) can prove motivating (Belle, 2013)
- Job crafting – trying to match what we do to what we enjoy and do best – seemed to help in a (small, quasi-experimental) study of Dutch teachers (Van Wingerden, Bakker and Derks, 2017). We might suggest to our line manager that we spend more time on curriculum design, teaching Year 7 or parental liaison (rather than meetings, teaching Year 12 or data entry, for example).
Conclusion
If we know which resources matter most to us (or what we lack), we can focus on getting more of them. Limiting unwelcome job demands is important too (and this is an ongoing task for managers and teams, not just individual teachers). But increasing our resources is a way to cope with these demands, enjoy our work and stick with it. In future posts I’ll delve further into the research, and suggest ways to apply it in schools: if you might be interested in your school participating, sign up here.
If you found this interesting, you might enjoy…
I’ve written about limiting the demands on us and crafting our role when discussing time management as a teacher.
I’ve written about using some of these ideas when working with students: building autonomy and competence and helping students belong at school.
This is really interesting. I am currently line managing three departments and am constantly reflecting on this topic. It is really important to me that my staff are ok and that I can help them not to feel weighed down. We work in a challenging context and the demands are high. I find autonomy a tough one. I think there is a link to be teased out, perhaps, between autonomy and job crafting. Just my instant musings. I look forward to reading more.
Thanks for the comment: this is a blog post I’m wrestling with now… how much autonomy, and how to make it work for students too…