Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic greatly impacted the well-being of PK-12 educators. Educators found themselves at significant risk for mental health issues and many had limited access to mental health services. When educators’ wellness is compromised, they have difficulty providing the education and resources youth need to learn. This proposed project, Building a Community of Resilience: Social Emotional Learning for Educators, investigates the effectiveness of providing a multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) to educators to reduce burnout, increase job satisfaction, and increase their knowledge and skills in responding to social situations in teaching. The first study evaluates the effectiveness of a one year modified MTSS system in six rural schools and one urban school. MTSS will be implemented in four schools during the 2022-2023 school year and three during the 2023-2024 school year. All schools are located in counties designated as having a shortage of mental health professionals, and they were chosen due to their needs and lack of resources. Study 2 explores the effectiveness of providing the same MTSS to three cohorts of pre-service teachers during the semester they student teach. The same measures will be used before and after the program and at follow-up. A repeated measures with waitlist control design will be used in Study 1. A repeated measures within group design with replication will be used in Study 2. The results of these two studies will inform further program development aimed at providing effective supports to school personnel.

This project was funded by the Scanlan Center for School Mental Health in June 2022. The Scanlan Center awarded $1 million in research grants to support interventions to improve social, emotional, behavioral, or psychological outcomes in Iowa’s PreK-12 schools. Each project was two years and ran from July 1, 2022, through June 30, 2024.

Project Team

• Kerri Clopton, Associate Professor, Department of Educational Psychology, Foundations and Leadership Studies, University of Northern Iowa
• Darcie Davis-Gage, Associate Professor and Division Chair in the University of Northern Iowa’s School of Applied Human Sciences