3-Year Longitudinal Study Links Job Tension In Teachers To Student Achievement

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Healthcare Prof:

After 17 years of researching traumatic tension with war-afflicted populations (veterans and civilians) and job pressure in the medical profession, Teresa McIntyre, a research professor within the department of psychology along with the Texas Institute for Evaluation, Measurement and Statistics (Occasions), in the University of Houston (UH), decided to study another high danger occupation, middle school teachers in seventh and eighth grade.

“Teaching can be a highly stressful occupation,” McIntyre stated. “Teacher pressure affects various aspects of teacher well being and could influence how successful teachers are in the classroom, with potential consequences for their students’ behavior and learning.

“I started to research the literature on stress and teachers inside the U.S. and discovered really little info. There was no comprehensive study of teachers’ tension or even an audit of the percentage of teachers who are stressed. I saw a void here and a should study.”

McIntyre serves as primary investigator for a $1.6 million grant funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), U.S. Department of Education, titled, “Using Longitudinal and Momentary Analysis to Study the Impact of Middle School Teachers’ Stress on Teacher Effectiveness, Student Behavior and Achievement.”

The analysis study starts at the beginning of this coming school year and follows 200 seventh-and eighth-grade social studies, science or math teachers in 20 middle schools in H.I.S.D. and thousands of students over a three-year period. The investigation team intends to identify predictors and outcomes of job anxiety in middle school teachers, linking teacher tension to student behavior and achievement via teacher effectiveness. The results of the data may be used to guide further development of interventions to mitigate teacher pressure and, consequently, boost teacher effectiveness and student behavior and learning.

“Middle school is probably essentially the most difficult level to teach because student-teacher interactions are more difficult throughout this time, and this kind of difficulty in teacher-student interactions is a significant source of stress for teachers at this level,” McIntyre said. “For students it’s a time of adolescence and several changes developmentally, and that is going to affect the dynamics of learning, together with the social relationships and climate within the classroom. It’s going to affect the teachers too. Our premise is that if the teacher is stressed, their behavior is going to be distinct with students, and they will carry out differently with students.”

McIntyre conducted a pilot study within the Greater Houston area in 2010 that indicated that at least one third of middle school teachers could be substantially stressed.

The UH investigation team will combine an innovative multi-method approach to assessing pressure and teacher effectiveness, which involves ecological momentary assessment or real-time assessment, concurrent physiological measurements that will monitor blood pressure and heart rate, and in-classroom observational ratings. The researchers will use probably the most current technology to assess tension, which includes self-report on a Teacher Stress Diary utilizing an iPod Touch platform, and teacher effectiveness ratings on an iPad. Data will probably be collected on students in the teachers’ classroom utilizing teacher anxiety diaries, archival school records and observational ratings. The innovative software programs are being developed by Sean Woodward at Times and also the novel statistical methodologies necessary to analyze the intensive longitudinal data generated by real time assessment will likely be provided by Times and the UH department of psychology faculty Paras Mehta. The methodological and technical support provided by the UH’s Times, directed by David Francis, together with its expertise in education study, are key towards the implementation of this sort of study.

“With this study we will be able to get a much more dynamic picture of how teachers respond to tension in real time,” McIntyre said. “And that’s what this ecological momentary assessment does – it assesses anxiety by way of the person’s diary report of pressure when things are happening, extremely close towards the event. Teachers will probably be in a position to report their emotions – positive, negative; how their cognitive functions are affected by pressure; and what’s happening at the moment in terms of social interactions, social conflict, demands on the job, the time pressure and regardless of whether they feel they are in control of their circumstance. They also report on effectiveness in instruction and classroom management, an on their student’s behavior within the classroom”

McIntyre notes the larger contribution of the study is to take the pulse of the educational program and see what’s happening in challenging economic times and to evaluate what impact this has on teachers and students, “The study addresses a key issue in contemporary education: how to boost teacher good quality in the face of increasing demands inside the education program; it is all about supporting teachers, students and school administrators at a time of depleted resources.”

The results of the study could possibly be used to guide further development of interventions to mitigate teacher tension and, consequently, boost teacher effectiveness and student behavior and learning. The data collected will probably be useful for school administrators and principals to know, including what aspects are causing teachers to be more stressed and less efficient, and what resources might be arranged to alter that trajectory into a positive 1.

Notes:

The investigation project can be a collaborative effort with UH, the University of Houston-Clear Lake (UH-CL), the University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine, and the Houston Independent School District (H.I.S.D.). UH collaborators are Paras Mehta, David Francis, Angelia Durand and Pat Taylor (psychology and Occasions), and Scott McIntyre (UH-CL); UH advisory board members are Christiane Spitzmueller and Qian Lu (psychology), and Chris Wolters (educational psychology); consultant is Dr. Thomas Kamarck, University of Pittsburgh.

Source:
Melissa Carroll
University of Houston

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