How Do We Know If Teachers Are Well? The Wellbeing Holistic Assessment for Teachers Tool

Abstract

This article reports on the development, adaptation, and validation of the Wellbeing Holistic Assessment for Teachers (WHAT) tool with a sample of 1,659 Salvadoran teachers. El Salvador is a conflict-affected country marked by high levels of gang-related violence, which interacts with education and directly affects the wellbeing of teachers. Having a contextually grounded and validated tool is imperative to further our understanding of educator wellbeing in El Salvador and other conflict-affected settings, as it enables us to generate evidence that informs policies and interventions. In this article, we describe how we reviewed and selected the measures that comprise the WHAT tool, followed by an initial conceptualization of teacher wellbeing and a description of the experiences and challenges teachers in El Salvador are facing. We describe our process for translating and adapting the selected measures to the Salvadoran context, which included conducting cognitive interviews. The results from our exploratory factor analysis provide construct validity evidence for the internal structure of the individual measures used. The exploratory factor analysis that included all the items for all the measures confirmed that each scale is indeed measuring a different construct. The results from a confirmatory factor analysis confirmed a good model fit. The process of adapting the tool and the results of our psychometric analysis provide evidence of the tool's validity, based on the content of the items in the tool, the internal structure, and its relationship to other variables.

Evaluating the implementation quality of a vocational education intervention for youth in Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya: Evidence of discrimination

“…Such conditions may have far-reaching adverse effects on the wellbeing of both teachers and students over time, and more so on the quality of teaching (Oh and van der Stouwe, 2008;Dryden-Peterson, 2015;Burde et al, 2017;DeJong et al, 2017). There is a need for more funding to support the in-service teacher training and development that should focus on increasing their capacity in terms of resilience, competency, and psychosocial support skills for their personal growth and that of their students (Taylor and Sidhu, 2012;Mendenhall et al, 2015;Soares et al, 2021;Lasater et al, 2022). Further, support for further education of resourceful refugee teachers to qualify as full-fledged teachers would offer secure and long-term solutions.…”

“…About 72% of refugee teachers in the camp have only secondary school academic qualifications and are not adequately supported with training and teaching resources (Mendenhall et al, 2015;World Bank and UNHRC, 2021). Research shows that these factors may hinder the delivery of quality education to refugees in humanitarian contexts (e.g., Dryden-Peterson, 2011;MacKinnon, 2014;Mendenhall et al, 2015;Burde et al, 2017;Soares et al, 2021). Yet, fewer studies have focused on assessing the quality with which education interventions targeting refugee youth are implemented in such contexts.…”

“…The recruitment process of teachers and other education personnel should not only be transparent and inclusive, but those hired should also be sufficient in number and with appropriate qualifications (INEE, 2010;OECD, 2019), possibly including competencies to teach diverse and potentially vulnerable refugee learners (Oh and van der Stouwe, 2008;Miller et al, 2017). Teaching and nonteaching staff should have well-defined terms of engagement with appropriate renumeration and functioning support and supervision mechanisms such as sufficient teaching and learning materials, psychosocial support, and regular feedback from students (Brown, 2001;INEE, 2010;Soares et al, 2021).…”