Using technology to reduce teacher burnout

Anyone who knows a teacher understands that work doesn’t end at the school gates. The mental load of teaching, planning, and marking; all while staying aware of student wellbeing and performance can take its toll over time, contributing to a sharp rise in teacher burnout.

In 2018, a survey of teachers showed that 58% of respondents experienced significant stress about work. In 2021, that statistic rose to a staggering 75% - with the likely contributor being the overnight turnaround to become frontline workers and the need to adjust to new online learning technologies during a global pandemic.

The root of these issues can’t be solved in a day, however there are a number of ways schools can help lessen the mental load and save teachers’ valuable time.

One of these areas is the software and hardware teachers use, which studies have shown can have a significant impact on teacher wellbeing, when high-quality software and advanced ICT-related policies are combined with strong information literacy among teaching staff.

With that in mind, let’s look at some ways schools can support their teachers with technology.

Present data in a useable format

Surveys have shown that administrative tasks in-between classes cause far more stress among teachers than actual classroom teaching.

Trudging through multiple systems, hunting for the right information, then manually interpreting and analysing this data can be a confusing and time-consuming task. This is why student data analysis is often left on the back burner, or done during a teacher’s free time.

Investing in a system that takes data from across your school, analyses and displays it in quick and easy dashboards is a great way to relieve this burden from teachers - allowing them access to the answers they need at a glance, without having to do the math themselves.

Improving teacher ICT literacy

 In recent years, teachers have carried the burden of rapidly learning and using more and more systems in order to keep their classrooms functioning in remote or hybrid environments. Providing ongoing support and data literacy training (especially for any newly introduced systems) is crucial to avoiding learning fatigue.

Evaluate your school to get a realistic understanding of your staff’s data literacy, and provide assistance where required with training and professional development opportunities.

Technical proficiency will vary from person to person, so it’s important to provide opportunities for teachers to improve and maintain the level of data literacy required to use the software you encourage them to use day-to-day.

Read more about improving Human Infrastructure in our blog: Examining Infrastructure for Effective Data Use.

Push Notifications and Automation

Teachers are often expected to instantly know and understand the current status of each student across multiple classes. This is a time-consuming and overwhelming task, which can seriously impact a teacher’s mental state – and still risks the chance of a struggling student going unnoticed.

Setting up push notifications to automatically notify staff of key events and trends among students can help take this mental workload off teachers. A system with this feature (such as the Learning Analytics Suite) should be able to notify staff of things like absence trends, pastoral care alerts, academic results trends and even wellbeing alerts.

Many edtech systems have a feature like this available, but it often goes underutilised. Take the time to investigate the options with the systems you have in place, and support teachers to set up these notifications if available.

Integrations

Consider all the software in your school that teachers use day-to-day. With all these systems in place, it’s easy for information to end up stored across multiple locations, which can lead to double handling by staff, or risks data becoming outdated. This makes already arduous tasks even more time-consuming and confusing, since teachers have to go hunting for the right information.

Systems that integrate and share data to operate efficiently help to create less work for teachers.

Ensure your software ecosystem is set up in a way that allows data to be entered once and visible everywhere - teachers have enough to worry about in a busy classroom without adding extra administration or data entry to their workload.

Learn more about how the Learning Analytics Suite fits into your software ecosystem.

Teachers are the heart of the school community, and their passion and drive is what makes the difference between a regular classroom and an inspiring one. However, when teachers are overworked, burnt out, and using up their free time just to manage their day-to-day tasks, it doesn’t leave much energy for going “above and beyond”.

Taking steps to ensure you are supporting teachers with the right software, technology and training, is a great way to contribute to the long-term wellbeing of your staff. Talk to your IT department today and start a conversation about how your systems and technology are impacting teachers and their workload.

Sources

Carroll, A., Forrest, K., Sanders-O’Connor, E. et al. Teacher stress and burnout in Australia: examining the role of intrapersonal and environmental factors. Soc Psychol Educ 25, 441–469 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-022-09686-7

Chen, M., Zhou, C., Wang, Y. et al. The role of school ICT construction and teacher information literacy in reducing teacher burnout: Based on SEM and fsQCA. Educ Inf Technol 27, 8751–8770 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-022-10989-7

NEiTA, ACE, Teachers Report Card 2021: Teachers’ perceptions of education and their profession (2021) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HrzGkDKnRLgklW3vLY4otrpctmPZ5jbX/view

Thomson, S. TALIS: Stress levels among Australian teachers, Teacher Magazine (2020) https://www.teachermagazine.com/au_en/articles/talis-stress-levels-among-australian-teachers