SUPPORTING MENTAL HEALTH AND WELLBEING IN SCHOOLS
IN THIS “RESEARCH INSIGHTS” EDITION
In this edition of our “Research Insights” series, we examine what two NNERPP members are finding in two in-process research projects investigating how to support mental health in schools. The two RPP teams, one based in El Paso, Texas, and one in Richmond, Virginia, highlight their respective projects and what they have found so far, including how the direct involvement of school- and district side partners was critical to their respective research projects.
WHY THIS ARTICLE
Supporting mental health in K-12 schools has become increasingly important amidst the unprecedented challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic accelerated mental health challenges for both students and educators, while also disrupting access to school-based mental health supports. At the same time, mental health can still be a taboo topic. By diving deeper into the research conducted by two RPPs and how they went about designing their projects, we hope to highlight promising approaches to studying this topic as well as to improving student and educator mental health.
OVERVIEW
Let’s first take a quick look at the two partnerships featured in this article and the corresponding research artifacts. In Table 1 below, you’ll find the partnership name as well as a brief description of the RPP in column 1 and the title and link to the research artifacts in column 2, where available.
Table 1. List of RPPs + Artifacts Included in This Article
| Partnership | Artifact |
| Paso Del Norte Partnership for Education Research: PDNPER is a partnership between several school districts in the El Paso region (Clint Independent School District, El Paso ISD, San Elizario ISD, Ysleta ISD, Fabens ISD, and Socorro ISD), community agencies in the region, and the College of Education at The University of Texas at El Paso. | This project is currently ongoing. Artifacts are not publicly available yet. |
| Metropolitan Educational Research Consortium: MERC is a partnership between several Richmond-area school districts (Chesterfield County Public Schools, Goochland County Public Schools, Hanover County Public Schools, Henrico County Public Schools, Petersburg City Public Schools, and Richmond Public Schools) and Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Education. | This project is currently ongoing. You can find initial literature reviews, podcast episodes, and more information on the project on this landing page: Supporting Mental Health in Schools Study |
(I) EL PASO, TEXAS
We invited members of the El Paso partnership to share more about their research project on supporting mental health in schools in their region. See below for what they have shared!
Research Questions
This study focuses on examining the general well-being of educators in the El Paso, TX region. Well-being was broadly defined to include levels of stress, compassion satisfaction and fatigue, burnout, self-care practices. In addition to exploring the overall well-being of educators, we also wanted to examine and better understand the following:
- What has been the impact of COVID-19 on educator well-being?
- What have been the behaviors and/or tools educators have used to thrive in their respective roles?
- What have been the most adverse experiences related to well-being?
- What additional supports are needed?
- What changes need to be made to educational policies?
Context and Research Methods
This study is a culmination of the collective needs that arose during our Fall 2021 Symposium for Understanding and Improving Educator Well-Being: A Hybrid Event on K-12 Educator Mental Health Needs in the Paso del Norte Region. Symposium participants, including K-12 practitioners and higher-education professors, gained a better understanding of stress, burnout, trauma, and overall mental health demographics in our community. They also participated in a mindfulness activity that practitioners could use in their daily lives. However, the feedback from the K-12 participants indicated that due to the continuing issues of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the challenges of students and families navigating the ongoing immigration issues in the border community, much more research was needed to address the critical mental health needs of educators and school leaders in our community. A few months following the symposium, we met with district leaders of one large urban and two rural school districts to propose the study, and they agreed to partner in this endeavor.
This study utilized an explanatory sequential mixed methods design in which the quantitative and qualitative phases are procedurally predetermined so a priority exists where the quantitative portion of the study precedes the qualitative portion. Data collection and analysis occurred at two sequential stages of the research. In the first quantitative phase, online-survey data was gathered and analyzed. The survey was emailed to approximately 3,000 educators in the partnering districts. Under the category of educators, we included teachers, principals, assistant principals, librarians, counselors, nurses, instructional coaches, and other personnel that serves in an informal and/or formal leadership capacity at the campus level.
In the second qualitative phase, which builds on the findings from the first phase, interviews and focus groups were utilized to obtain data. The survey included an option for participants to volunteer to participate in either one-to-one or focus interviews. We conducted approximately 30 interviews and completed the data collection in August.
Throughout this process, we engaged with the districts in different ways. Prior to sending out the survey, we shared the survey instrument with the districts to get their feedback and make sure the questions were aligned to the data they were interested in gathering. We also worked closely with the districts to identify the participants and collect their email addresses. Once the survey was sent out, we sought their advice on how to increase survey participation.
What Does the Research Show?
We are currently conducting the data analysis for this study. We anticipate completing the analysis in the next few months and sharing the findings with the districts. Preliminary findings indicate that the amount of stress and burnout increased after the onset of COVID-19. While many educators reported working over 50 hours a week pre-COVID, the number of educators working over 50 hours in the past 2.5 years has increased. From the interviews, one of the big takeaways for us was the commitment all the interviewees expressed to their students and school communities. Despite the feelings of burnout and in some cases, considering leaving the field, what was reflected in each interview was the reason these educators continued to show up every day was the students.
How Will the Work Be Used in Practice?
The results and findings from this study are anticipated to serve several purposes. Our participating school districts are planning to utilize the findings to make informed decisions about programs, policies, and other supports that will address the needs of their educators. For example, one of the participating rural districts, San Elizario Independent School District, is implementing a wellbeing initiative for its employees called Healing@theNest. This is a 5-year plan for the recovery of the body, soul, and mind of its educators. As we continue to share additional data with them, they remain committed to utilize the data to drive future support systems for their employees.
As the opportunities present themselves, our hope is to continue to collaborate with these districts as they implement programs to address educator well-being. This research study has the potential to open other lines of inquiry in school and district leadership based on needs identified by the districts.
(II) RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
We invited members of the Richmond-based partnership to share more about their research project on supporting mental health in schools in their region. Let’s dive into what they shared!
Research Questions
Our first component of our study focuses on understanding what programs and practices school divisions [1] in the MERC region are currently employing to support student and faculty mental health, and what characteristics make them successful.
The second component examines the current emotional and professional capacity of faculty and staff in MERC division schools to meet the mental health needs of their students. Our complete set of research questions is listed in our research design.
Context and Research Methods
This study was commissioned by our school divisions in recognition of the unique mental health challenges that their students, staff, and families were facing in the wake of COVID-19. This tracks with broader research suggesting that there are rising mental health needs in schools, and that schools thus urgently need resources and evidence-based practices for effectively addressing them. The topic of supporting mental health in schools had been proposed as a potential MERC study for previous research cycles, but it was not until the pandemic that our divisions decided to pursue it in depth.
To explore this topic, we are executing the research in two components:
Component one explores current practices for supporting the mental health of students, staff, and families in MERC division schools. To learn more about this, we are conducting an informational survey throughout our region where school-based mental health providers will share information about their current programs and initiatives, which we will then compile to share with central office personnel to offer a landscape analysis of what efforts currently exist in their divisions. Then we will display those programs and initiatives in an online dashboard accessible to school counselors, social workers, and psychologists throughout our region so they can search and filter the information to best meet the needs of their students. We hope that this will prove to be a clearinghouse platform for sharing resources related to mental health support among our school divisions. The informational survey was designed by both university-based researchers and school-based personnel on our study team and we will partner with a coordinator of mental health services from each division to administer it. This approach ensures that the survey is relevant to the needs and interests of our partners, maximizing the potential value of its findings. Additionally, we will select three programs from this phase to conduct an evaluation on, offering findings to all MERC divisions for potential scalability in our region.
For component two, we are conducting a survey during the 2023-2024 academic year of all school-based faculty and staff in the MERC region to understand their emotional and professional capacity to meet the mental health needs of their students. This will include questions about their own current mental health, how they perceive the current mental health of their students, and how prepared they feel to meet those mental health needs. Once again, our school division partners serving on our study team helped design this survey and will be instrumental in helping us interpret the findings.
What Does the Research Show?
We are still in the literature review and data collection phase of our study, but the literature indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic was massively disruptive to the lives of our students and their families, that caregiver (e.g. parent) and youth mental health are closely connected, and that there was evidence of broad increases in stress, anxiety, and depression in the wake of the pandemic. Some student groups had their mental health particularly impacted, including underrepresented racial minority students, low-income students, female and non-binary students, students with existing disabilities and mental health challenges, and students struggling with substance abuse. The research also shows evidence of considerable resilience and coping skills demonstrated by PK-12 aged youth during the challenges posed by COVID-19.
How Will the Work Be Used in Practice?
We anticipate that the dashboard generated from this study will serve as a clearinghouse of resources for the school-based mental health providers in our region, and that the evaluation aspect of our study will offer evidence of what mental health programs are most effective in different school contexts. Additionally, we anticipate the results of our faculty and staff survey to serve as a timely needs assessment, offering direct feedback from educators about what policies and practices are supportive or not for the mental health of staff and students in the region. We expect this to inform decision-making for school board policies related to mental health in our school divisions.
IMPLICATIONS AND INSIGHTS
Here, both RPP teams share some additional thoughts on their projects, including insights that emerged while working on the projects and thoughts on possible implications of the projects once completed.
EL PASO, TEXAS
In our RPP work, we always aim to collaborate with districts to identify specific areas of need and co-create research projects that can generate practical solutions and resources to address needs. With this project, our mutual interests in investigating educator wellbeing made it a very nice fit for both the research- and practice-side partners. However, once we began the study, we noticed that participation in the survey was not as high as we had expected. As we reflected on why there was low participation, we knew that wellbeing was a real issue, but felt that the topic itself may be taboo. Educators may have felt hesitant to talk about their wellbeing needs and experiences. In their day-to-day, wellbeing was not being discussed or addressed, particularly in the earlier phase of the pandemic. As we analyze the interview data during the next phase of this project, we will be curious to see if any patterns in responses emerge that might support this idea. Additionally, with so many urgent issues competing for their time, giving up 30 minutes to complete a survey and an hour to participate in an interview may have been too cumbersome for some of these educators.
Limited time was also a challenge as we considered to what extent we should be engaging our district partners in the research process. Did they have time to engage in problem-solving discussions around logistics, research design, and other relevant issues? Many of the research-side partners in our partnership are former practice-side people, so we are especially cognizant of the limited time districts have to give to external projects. One of the lessons we learned throughout this project is that we need to include our district partners in more strategic and intentional ways throughout the entire process. For example, for future projects, from the outset, we intend to co-design the research study, set realistic expectations for the roles each of the partners will play, the outcomes the research is expected to produce, and establish meeting timelines for updates, problem-solving, and other issues that may need to be addressed. We believe this will help us as a region to develop a research culture, and more importantly a research partnership culture that will allow us to continue to grow this work. Our ultimate goal is to engage in authentic and meaningful partnerships, and this project has yielded many useful lessons so far in working towards that goal.
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
It is a working theory of our study that because of the rising mental health needs in our schools and the tendency for school-based mental health providers like counselors, social workers, and psychologists to be overloaded, teachers will also be tasked with offering mental health support at a time when they are feeling high levels of stress and burnout. This lends itself to what we hope will be a practical implication of our study: actionable strategies for ensuring that all faculty and staff are sufficiently trained in providing mental health support to students while also ensuring that their own mental health needs are met. Additionally, we hope that our study illustrates how RPPs can generate practical resources for immediate use in schools in the form of dashboards that also help further the research.
CONCLUSION
Supporting mental health in schools is critical but challenging as both students’ and educators’ well-being has been impacted by COVID-19 and pandemic-related challenges. Additionally, mental health can be a delicate topic to broach. RPPs are well positioned to take on studying this topic – as both the El Paso and the Richmond team shared above, their close collaboration with practice-side partners has been critical to getting it right. We look forward to hearing more about their projects as they move forward.
Isela Peña is Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and Foundations at The University of Texas at El Paso; Rodolfo Rincones is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Foundations at The University of Texas at El Paso; Holly Fields is Assistant Director for Research-Practice Partnerships of the Paso del Norte Partnership for Education Research; and David Naff is Associate Director of the Metropolitan Educational Research Consortium and Assistant Professor of Foundations of Education at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Education.
Suggested citation: Peña, I., Rincones, R., Fields, H., & Naff, D. (2022). Supporting Mental Health and Wellbeing in Schools. NNERPP Extra, 4(3), 2-7. https://doi.org/10.25613/JZCX-WN25
