A teacher standing in front of a group of students during instruction time is doing much more than teaching a lesson — they are also simultaneously managing the complex emotions of the students engaging with the subject, as well as their own.
Teachers carry the weight of their students’ accomplishments and struggles in profound ways. For those teaching elementary math, the emotional toll can be great, says Dionne Cross Francis, Ph.D., Joseph R. Neikirk Term Professor at the UNC School of Education, whose research explores the intersection of mathematics education, educational psychology, and teacher education.
“Mathematics education is highly emotional work. Teachers want to be very competent in what they do, and they want to be able to support students in being the strong mathematical thinkers that they can be,” says Cross Francis. “Simultaneously, we can’t forget that their well-being also needs attention. When their well-being is negatively affected, it can impact the efficacy of their instruction.”
In math, the stakes are particularly high for students and teachers. Standardized tests for math and reading begin in third grade, and in almost every state in the U.S., a teacher’s effectiveness is judged by those scores.
Add in another emotional layer — students’ negative attitudes about math — and trying to engage a room full of frustrated students who don’t want to be there can be defeating for a teacher. These scenarios can create or compound teacher anxiety. They can also elicit productive emotions like the joy of watching students master a new skill or gain confidence.
Cross Francis and her team in the Research on the Emotional, Social, and Psychological Influences on Teachers’ Experiences (RESPITE) Lab draw upon these math education realities and have put forward a new approach to supporting teachers through high-impact professional development.
Professional development (PD) is often delivered through mandated workshops that focus on a single topic and assume one approach works for everyone — an approach some teachers find disconnected from their real needs. But there’s a more meaningful way to help teachers develop, says Cross Francis. In a recent paper published in Methods of Psychology, she and her research team highlight the success of a new model, called Holistic Personalized Coaching (HPC), to address the individual and psychological demands of teaching, which results show not only positively influences teacher well-being, but also enhances students’ learning.
Personalized coaching makes the case for moving from a “one-size-fits-all” model to a “one-size-fits-one” model.
“Teachers need to effectively navigate so much for their students and help them regulate so they remain engaged, so that the learning process is fruitful. Teachers are navigating their own emotions through that process. Most teachers don’t want to see their kids struggle, even if it’s a productive struggle.”
A more holistic model
Cross Francis says traditional PD in math education focuses mostly on enhancing teacher knowledge of mathematical content and pedagogy, with little room for addressing a teacher’s individual needs or the psycho-social-emotional demands of teaching. The research team took the existing model of PD and expanded it to consider the psychosocial, emotional constructs, and attributes of teachers, and how those need to be attended to and integrated into coaching. HPC considers the teacher as a learner from all angles and offers coaching where discussions aren’t limited to math content.
It also focuses on capturing their beliefs about teaching and their own feelings about their effectiveness as a teacher, as well as their emotions, sense of identity, and level of knowledge about the subject. All these things are connected and influence how teachers make decisions in the classroom and have an impact on their well-being.
It’s not that traditional PD isn’t effective or valuable, says Cross Francis, just that it’s often an insufficient, hit-or-miss method of support. There’s only so much individual support that can happen in that space. For the paper, the team focuses on two early-career Ghanian teachers who are tasked under a new math mandate to shift from repetition-based teaching, an instructional method that reinforces concepts and skills through repeated exposure and practice, to student-based teaching, which shifts the focus of instruction from the teacher to the student. In both cases, the teachers benefited from personalized coaching that considered their own beliefs about their teaching skills, their satisfaction with the mandate, and their individual needs to make the shift successfully.
“The traditional model can help teachers to improve their knowledge of content, but if they’re feeling anxious, or if they don’t feel competent in terms of implementing them, they’re still not going to do them. We have to work with the entire psychological terrain to help them navigate the spaces that they’re in and enact the practices that we know are really effective for kids.”
HPC consists of three overarching phases. In Phase 1, the teachers answer questions to help create a profile of who the teacher is as a professional and a learner, which can be used to shape the teacher-coach interactions.
Phase 2 involves five iterative cycles of collaborative lesson development, with in-class coaching and conversations informed by the teacher’s profile and individual characteristics. This helps coaches:
- Engage the teacher in sense-making around their actions,
- Understand their motivations,
- Promote self-awareness,
- Develop emotional awareness and regulation strategies, and
- Develop strategies to enhance teaching, personal well-being, and student outcomes.
Phase 3 is completed after the last coaching cycle to collect data similar to Phase 1 to be analyzed and triangulated.
“HPC goes beyond just observing teachers or giving them ideas. Coaches really talk to them and help them to unpack what they’re experiencing, because sometimes it’s not obvious to them why they are making certain teaching decisions in the moment,” says Cross Francis. “It is really important to see teachers for the individuals that they are, to see them as learners in the context of professional development, and recognizing that this is applicable to their professional development.”
A win-win scenario for well-being
If all a teacher had to do were perform the tasks around teaching, the mastery of ideas or curriculum, it would already be challenging, says Cross Francis. But children are human beings coming into the classroom as their whole selves. Many of the events and circumstances of their lives outside school are coming to school with them.
“If a child is stressed out from things that are happening outside the classroom context, and they come to the classroom, then all of that is going to bubble over, because they’re engaged in a really cognitively rich space. Teachers have to navigate all of that plus teach, plus counsel, and deal with a ton of administrative work and the demands on them. They’re required to manage it all and manage it well, and that’s a high level of stress for any teacher.”
These levels of stress often lead to or accompany depersonalization, disconnection from the employment, or burnout. Reduced well-being can result in disengagement in innovative teaching practices and a reduced capacity for attending to the emotional needs of students.
The team’s research found that HPC is an effective model of professional development to support both teachers’ well-being and math instruction. The team found shifts in teachers’ psychological and affective attributes over their year-long participation in HPC, as well as improvement in the quality of math instruction.
“Enhancing a teacher’s well-being is a win-win for student learning. It has an impact on their instructional quality and the nature of the relationship that they have with their students. All of this is reason enough to say this is something that we need to attend to because it’s going to influence how they focus their attention, what they attend to, and how much attention they pay to it.”
‘It’s worth it’
HPC is fairly time-intensive, with multiple coaching sessions over time, Cross Francis acknowledges, but it’s worth it. With this model, a teacher can learn to turn the lens on their own practices and work with a coach to unpack and analyze their decision-making and then use that information to make decisions in the future. PD does have a place, and when it’s paired with HPC, it’s more effective, she says. HPC acknowledges that attending to teachers holistically is important and provides support around setting up systems for their continued development.
And, it’s an investment. Financial constraints of districts often determine what kind of professional development is available, and advocating for HPC in many districts will likely take outreach and increased awareness.
But Cross Francis says the payoff can be long-lasting.
“It’s a time investment that can help teachers develop the skills to begin to do this for themselves over time. If you are in the process of development, there are certain things that you start to track. You start to be more attuned to how you’re feeling during teaching and be more specific about your instructional goals, and that will help you more clearly articulate your needs and where you need support.”