Curtin University academic Dr Saul Karnovsky
New research has found that wellbeing programs for teachers can do more harm than good, writes Lucy Meyer.
When your workload is more than any teacher could manage, you’re balancing the needs of your employer and your students, and you’re so stressed you don’t know whether you can keep teaching, you can’t meditate your way to wellbeing. That’s the key takeaway from new research out of Curtin University.
According to education academics Dr Saul Karnovsky and Dr Brad Gobby, the stress that overworked teachers are experiencing is being compounded by a harmful approach to wellbeing in Australian schools.
Instead of addressing the workplace issues that cause burnout, employers often provide professional development and wellbeing programs that put the onus on teachers to manage the problem. These self-focused techniques include mindfulness, deep breathing, positive thinking, and exercise.
“Teachers are telling us that, ‘hang on a minute, that’s not fair, this is a structural problem here – this is an issue with how my workload is managed’,” Dr Karnovsky says.
While the researcher recognises the value of mindfulness and other wellbeing practices, he argues that these are personal self-care tools, not professional strategies to resolve systemic issues such as staff shortages. The personal and the professional are being conflated, he says.
Cruel wellbeing
Dr Karnovsky and his co-author coined the term ‘cruel wellbeing’ in their new paper. It’s used to describe the “cruelty of expecting teachers to be positive and make themselves well in difficult circumstances of others’ making”.
The research is based on a deep analysis of social media posts by Australian teachers on Reddit. Dr Karnovsky and Dr Gobby found that teachers could speak freely online, challenging dominant discourses around wellbeing.
Many were very cynical of wellbeing programs in their workplaces. Dr Karnovsky believes that part of the problem is that too often, corporate wellness programs are shoehorned into the education sector by private companies with no understanding of the reality teachers are grappling with.
Teachers “want to just put their guard up” and are left feeling misunderstood by school leadership, who booked the programs, and that can widen the divide between them.
To Dr Karnovsky, the emphasis on wellbeing in schools didn’t happen in a vacuum. “We can’t forget that the wellness industry is a multibillion-dollar industry,” he says. He worries that advantage can be taken of teachers who may be experiencing poor mental health.
Staff struggles
The latest data from Safe Work Australia shows that staff working in education and training are struggling with psychological health and safety. According to a February report, the sector ranked equal first in the number of serious claims for mental stress caused by work pressure.
To Dr Karnovsky, one of the contributors to poor mental health in school staff is ‘toxic positivity’. “A good way to describe toxic positivity is this notion of happiness at all costs,” he says.
In schools with a culture of toxic positivity, teachers feel they can’t express negative emotions or criticisms. It’s the idea that a good teacher is a happy teacher. But when teachers hold everything in, it can harm their mental health, Dr Karnovsky says.
The academic argues that teachers need spaces where it’s OK to critique problems in their workplaces, and unions play an important role in this.
He wants to see a cultural shift in schools. Speaking about mental health “should be something that is not stigmatised or demonised or people roll their eyes and think ‘gosh, they’re not going to be a good teacher because they can’t cope’.”
While the IEU is not opposed to ‘wellness’ programs, the union is constantly pressing employers for practical measures to ease workload pressures and prevent work intensification.