Orientation Matters: A Study of Teachers' Disposition towards Providing Psycho-Social Support

Background and Purpose: Perceived teacher caring and support are known to promote student well-being and achievement (Erickson, McDonald & Elder, 2009; Werner & Smith, 2001; Woolley & Bowen, 2007). There is also growing evidence that teachers' abilities to respond to appropriately student psycho-social needs may be a key aspect of student-teacher relationships (Roeser & Midgley, 1997), despite the fact that teachers receive limited training related to these issues (Koller & Bertel, 2006; Phillippo, 2010). While there is little research concerning teacher response to student psycho-social needs, evidence suggests that teachers can identify student mental health needs and see psycho-social support as part of their jobs, but also find this work overwhelming. Given the salience of teacher's abilities to provide such supports to students and the paucity of research in this area, the aim of this research was to address two questions: 1) What are the demographic and experiential characteristics of teachers who include psycho-social support responsibilities in their professional role definition? 2) Do these teachers' conceptualization of their role as a psycho-social support provider relate to student perceptions of teacher caring?

Methods and analysis:

Survey data were collected from 45 teachers and 517 students at three small, urban high schools. The key independent variable for the study was an eight-item composite that tapped teachers' inclusion of psycho-social support responsibilities into their role (α=.77). Teachers' age, gender, race, and training also served as controls. Key dependent variables included student perception of teacher caring, a ten-item composite variable (α=.82).

Analyses were conducted in two steps using both multivariate and multi-level regression techniques. First, multivariate associations were examined between the role composite and teacher characteristics, in order to determine whether advisor characteristics were related teacher inclination to include social-emotional support within their role definition. The second step used a multi-level model-- students nested within teachers--to consider the extent to which teacher role construction related to student perception of teacher caring.

Results

No teacher background characteristics (e.g., age, years teaching, training) were related to the extent to which teachers saw psycho-social support as part of their professional responsibilities. However, a strong psycho-social role orientation was positively associated with student perceptions of teacher caring, That is, when teachers defined their advisor role as inclusive of psycho-social support, students tended to perceive higher levels of teacher caring.

Conclusions and Implications

This study demonstrates the tangible importance of teachers' role definition relative to psycho-social support tasks. When teachers include psycho-social support in their professional responsibilities, their students are more likely to perceive teacher caring. At this point, teachers' role definitions seem to have little to do with their professional training, which may be a result of the overall lack of psycho-social support-relevant training among this limited sample of teachers.

These findings support school social work practitioners' and scholars' efforts to develop professional development and consultative approaches for teachers that will help them contribute to their students' psychosocial well-being.