Teachers’ resilience and well-being: a role for educational psychology

The retention and resilience of teachers are subject to many influences. Children’s behaviour is often cited as a major source of stress for teachers and a challenge to their resilience. We suggest that an understanding of teachers’ attributions and efficacy beliefs may provide the foundations for work to support teachers. We outline findings from research that has examined teachers’ attributions for the causes of children’s misbehaviour, teachers’ beliefs in their efficacy as classroom managers of children’s behaviour as well as how, in principle, such beliefs may be supported and enhanced. We also relate these findings to those associated with educational and developmental outcomes for children. We conclude with some illustrative evidence of ways (involving consultation and other interventions) that applied psychologists have contributed to the professional well-being and resilience of teachers.     

Analyzing a service-learning experience using a social justice lens

This mixed methods study explores a service-learning experience embedded in a social foundations course in a teacher education program. The authors differentiate learning outcomes for social justice and charity service-learning, and utilize this framework to examine whether the service-learning experience fosters a social justice perspective. The findings demonstrate that while the experience did foster social justice perspectives for some students, the data also reflect evidence of learning outcomes that align with charity service-learning.     

The effects of the Healthy Steps for Young Children Program: results from observations of parenting and child development

The Healthy Steps for Young Children Program (HS) is designed to provide support for new parents through the pediatrician's office. We present findings of the effect of HS on the quality of mother–child interaction, security of attachment, and child behavior using observational data from two of the HS sites that utilized a randomized treatment design. Results indicated that mothers participating in Healthy Steps were more likely to interact sensitively and appropriately than mothers in the comparison group at the second assessment point (age 34–37 months) but not at the first assessment point (age 16–18 months). There were no differences in child outcomes at either time point when the cross-sectional data were analyzed. However, the results of the longitudinal analysis (which included families who participated in the home observations at both Time 1 and Time 2) indicated that Healthy Steps participation was associated with greater security of attachment and fewer child behavior problems.     

Teacher verbal behavior following student success and failure

Undergraduate subjects taught identifying traits of animals (fish, reptiles, amphibians, mammals) to a fifth grade student confederate over a microphone. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of four conditions in which they failed (F) or succeeded (S) in teaching five animal comparison problems. The four conditions were (a) F, S, S, S, S; (b) F, F, F, S, S; (c) S, F, F, F, S; and (d) S, S, S, F, S. The teaching sessions were tape recorded and analyzed for Teaching Time, Word Rate, and Voice Amplitude. Analyses revealed increased Teaching Time and decreased Word Rate following failure. Voice Amplitude increased across teaching sessions independent of success or failure. Findings were interpreted as more consonant with frustration-aggression than frustrative nonreward energizing theory.     

SOURCES OF THE PUBLIC AGENDA:THE PRESIDENT-PRESS-PUBLIC RELATIONSHIP

This agenda-setting study explores ways that individuals processinformation issues by examining two potential public agendasources: the news media and the president of the USA. The researchersused a two-site study to examine the magnitude of influencefrom media exposure and perceived credibility of source. Itwas found that the higher the level of exposure to media anda presidential state-of-the-union message, the more likely thatissues were considered important. However, when both were examinedsimultaneously, media exposure was the more powerful predictor.Source credibility, both of the media and the president, wasalso found to influence how people perceived the importanceof issues.