Psychological Safety for Teachers with Alison Willis

Natalie McMaster talks with Alison Willis a lecturer in curriculum and pedagogy at the University of the Sunshine Coast.

Alison has a chapter in the book titled Health and Well-Being in the Middle Grades: Research for Effective Middle Level Education. Today's discussion focusses on how to create environments in schools that support the psychological safety of teachers.

More information is available at:
https://www.infoagepub.com/products/Health-and-Well-Being-in-the-Middle-Grades 

Transcript

 0:06 

 Okay, everyone. I'm here today with Alison Willis. She's a lecturer in curriculum and pedagogy at the University of the Sunshine Coast. Now, Alison's written a chapter in the book that's titled health and Well Being in the Middle Grades research for Effective Middle Level Education. So your chapter focuses on how to create environments that support the psychological safety of teachers in the middle 

 U2 

 0:32 

 grades. 2s I saw a cartoon recently, actually. I visited the Teacher Hub Education and Support website, and they had an image of someone who was falling over after stepping into a hole, and the caption was, you wouldn't ignore a trip hazard. And I guess that really resonated with me as a teacher, where I'm always so concerned about the students in my class risk and hazards, looking after their mental health and the well being of my students, that I really pay little attention to my own psychological safety in the workplace. 

 U1 

 1:09 

 So do you mind just taking a couple of minutes to explain what psychological safety for teachers in the middle grades is and why it's so important? Yeah, 

 U2 

 1:19 

 sure net. So psychological safety is like that glue in the middle, in between all the structures in your schools that help you do your job that should be there. And we know that they're there in varying degree s in different schools. And then your willingness to bring forward your ideas. So your willingness to bring forward your ideas about things that are working in your classroom, things that aren't working in your classroom, trialing new things, taking risks and trying out new innovative ideas so teachers have to feel safe in order to bring forward their ideas. And you're right, you know that little cartoon about a teacher falling over? Because that's what we do. We constantly put the needs of students ahead of our own needs. That's sort of part of the profession. Even though in the long run it's not sustainable, which I think is what you're alluding to. And because it's not sustainable, we need to think about how can we look after ourselves in this space but not only for the sake of ourselves but also for the sake of our students. Because we're not willing to try new things and have new innovative ideas. We're just going to do the same old same old and go around the same mountain time and time again. So psychological safety is definitely that mediating factor between all the support structures in a school that should help you do your job and then you going a little bit more than doing your job, being innovative and being creative and trying new things. 

 U1 

 2:46 

 Yeah. Awesome. What are the environments which support the psychological safety of teachers? Yeah, so that's really where my research comes in. And that's what I wanted to know. I wanted to know what are those structural antecedents that will give teachers that confidence to try ideas, to admit when things are not going well, which is a little bit of a taboo in schools, to be honest, because nobody really wants to admit it that they're failing a student. 2s But nevertheless, sometimes we do try things and they don't go so well. And we need to talk about that maybe with our colleagues or our upline. So that was my question. So what are the support structures that we can put in place in schools to help teachers in that way? And the data that I analyzed and the findings that came forward were really, really clear. Teachers actually need time. They need time in their workloads to be able to think, reflect on their practice and then have conversations with their colleagues so that they're not just constantly going from one urgent thing to the next in their timetable. The other thing that teachers need, the other structure that they need is space. So just the ability to come into the staff room and to go, well, that was great, that lesson was amazing. I have to do that again next year or well, man, that just took a nosedive. I didn't know that it was going to go so badly and just being able to debrief with your colleagues or debrief with a mentor. 1s So time and space are really big deals for teachers, and 1s it's probably very timely to talk about those things because 1s there's a big flurry at the moment around teacher workloads. The third thing that's vital to the psychological safety of teachers is relationships. 2s Obviously, the opposite to a positive relationship would be a toxic relationship. And you're just going to retract if you don't think 

 U2 

 4:46 

 that people have your best interests at heart around you, you're just going to retract and you're going to keep your own ideas to yourself and build your own little kingdom and silo in your classroom. So we really want to get teachers in environments where they've got time, space, but also psychologically safe working relationships with their colleagues so that they can have those honest conversations about their work. Fantastic. 1s What can schools do to maintain these environments for their own mental health and well being? Yeah. 

 U1 

 5:15 

 And it 

 U2 

 5:15 

 really does start with schools, so it really does start with providing those structures, so providing time, space and human resources and people, but otherwise the teacher is working alone in an environment that is working against them. Them. So if you've got an administrative staff that are really keen to and obviously administrators have got a lot of balls in the air, they're juggling a lot of priorities and imperatives. But if they can prioritize time and space and collegial working relationships, or even time and space to foster collegial working relationships for their staff, then it's amazing what can come about. Teachers are really smart people that are often very people focused, so really keen to collaborate, but sometimes we need to make sure that the environment is conducive to that. 

 U1 

 6:13 

 Fantastic. Was there anything else you'd like to share with us, Al, before we finish up tonight? 2s I guess where to 

 U2 

 6:22 

 from here? Um. 2s It's. Yeah, there's this look, there is a relationship between teacher wellbeing and psychological safety that needs to be that needs to be further investigated. You know, my my research is really preliminary in this space. Some other research by colleagues from Harvard University in Harvard Business School in in the US. Has has also invested investigated teach psychological safety. So if any of the listeners are interested in looking that up, if they were to Google or Google Scholar psychological safety in schools, they'll probably find that research. 2s The other area that is also a fascinating research provocation is how are students perceiving their own psychological safety now? What do students think about how can they ask a teacher a question if they're unsure of something? So that's a whole other area as well. That is probably a new frontier. Yeah, that's really exciting, because we often don't tend to think about how students are feeling in terms of their innovation or their ability to ask a question without feeling that they're in a safe environment. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. 

 U1 

 7:40 

 Fantastic. Al, thank you. And thank you so much for your research in our field of education as well. So plenty appreciated. 

 U2 

 7:47 

 Thank you.