Project Activities
Research plan
The PI conducted an exploratory project to address the following overarching research question: What factors are associated with special educator burnout and could be targeted in interventions designed to prevent or reduce burnout and improve educator and student outcomes? The following secondary research questions were explored to inform analysis of the overall research question: (1) To what extent does school density, role conflict, and role ambiguity relate to burnout? (2) To what extent does educator-student relationship quality relate to burnout and fidelity of implementing BSPs? (3) To what extent does educator self-efficacy relate to burnout and fidelity of implementing BSPs? (4) To what extent does cohesion with paraprofessional support staff relate to burnout? To investigate these questions, the PI collected survey, observation, focus group, and interview data from a sample of special educators in each year of the project. The PI used mixed-methods analyses (e.g., sequential-explanatory methods) to investigate the data.
Career plan
Through a career development plan, the PI developed expertise around (1) preventing and reducing special educator burnout and improving outcomes for students with and at risk for EBD, (2) multilevel and structural equation modeling and mixed-methods research, and (3) developing competitive grant proposals. The PI achieved these goals through monthly mentorship meetings, yearly consultations with experts in the field, coursework and workshops on mixed methods as well as advanced statistics and research design, and grant-writing workshops.
Key outcomes
Key Outcomes: The main findings of this project, as reported by the PI, are as follows:
- Role stressors (e.g., conflict, ambiguity) and teacher-student relationship conflict have strong associations with increased rates of teacher burnout.
- Students working with special education teachers experiencing higher rates of emotional exhaustion tend to respond less well to behavior support plans.
- Special education teachers indicate initiative fatigue is another main source of their burnout.
- Teacher burnout appears most detrimental to the quality of behavior support plans teachers develop, more so than the fidelity with which teachers implement those plans.
People and institutions involved
IES program contact(s)
Project contributors
Products and publications
ERIC Citations: Find available citations in ERIC for this award here.
Questions about this project?
To answer additional questions about this project or provide feedback, please contact the program officer.
