Support staff – a protective factor for teacher’s health? A mixed-methods study on the implementation and effectiveness of support staff on teachers’ occupational health.

How can we make schools an attractive workplace that attracts qualified teachers, and ensures that teachers have the health and motivation to work for most of their adult working life? This long-standing political question remains highly relevant today. Schools to date struggle with major teacher shortages and teachers leaving the profession prior to retirement age often due to stress and health-related problems.

Summary

Over the years, several governmental measures have been taken to increase the attractiveness of schools as a workplace. One of these measures is the disposition of funding earmarked for support staff (läraravlastande yrkesgrupper); a measure aimed at improving the work environment and working conditions of teachers. Since 2019 the government has allocated 2.5 billion SEK for the employment of this occupational group, and 500 million SEK is budgeted for 2024. Support staff are an important protective factor for teachers’ health, as they are expected to improve teachers’ work environment by reducing teachers’ workload by relieving them from certain tasks, such as administration and classroom management. Studies on the effectiveness of support staff in this regard are scarce. Existing studies show mixed results and suggest that the effectiveness of support staff is dependent on how they are implemented and organized within schools. A recent quality assessment of support staff conducted by the Swedish Schools Inspectorate highlighted several organizational-level weaknesses related to implementation, among others the lack of a long-term approach to the deployment of support staff. To increase our understanding of how support staff can better support teachers, the overall aim of this project is to increase knowledge of both the effectiveness of support staff on teacher’s workload and stress, and how support staff are to be implemented and organized in schools. The project will focus specifically on public compulsory schools.

Method

This 3-year project combines new longitudinal quantitative data-collection through surveys with new qualitative data-collection through focus-group interviews. The strength of combining these methods is that it will provide a more comprehensive understanding of the studied phenomenon. Data is first analyzed separately. Thereafter, a final re-analysis is made where the results are compared with each other.

Researcher team and financing

Participating researchers are Lydia Kwak (project leader), Helena Tinnerholm Ljungberg (KI), Jeffrey Casely-Hayford (KI), Christina Björklund (KI), och Per Lindqvist (Linnéuniversitetet).

The project is funded by AFA Försäkring.