Teachers as Health Workers

The discussion topic we have is on teachers as health workers. As teachers are increasingly engaging in work related to the health and wellbeing of children, it becomes critical in understanding how this work is undertaken in the work of teachers. This Australian Research Council (ARC) project. In this interview, we understand what teachers’ health work is about and how it is enacted in schools. Lastly, we ask Tony on the significance of this research to teachers. 

Interviewer: Melisa Chong is a lecturer in Health and Physical Education from the University of Southern Queensland. She is a member of the Australian Health Promoting Schools committee and researches in the area of teachers’ health work in primary schools. 

Interviewee: Professor Tony Rossi is a deputy dean in the School of Health Sciences from Western Sydney University. He is one of the team members of the Australian Research Council project on Teachers as health workers. The team has published a book titled ‘Teachers as Health workers’ and multiple journal articles from the project.

Transcript

00:00:06 Melisa Chong 

Welcome, Tony, to our broadcast today. I'm Melissa. One of the committee members in the Australian Health promoting schools. So I would like to welcome Professor Tony Rossi. 

00:00:20 Melisa Chong 

From Western Sydney University, Tony is the deputy Dean in the School of Health Sciences and one of the team members of the Arc Project on teachers health workers. 

00:00:34 Melisa Chong 

So Tony, firstly, can you tell me a little bit on what teachers health work is all about? 

00:00:42 Prof Tony Rossi 

Well the the project came into existence because. It was. It was quite apparent from our visits to schools and our other important connections to the schooling system. When I was at the University of QLD. That the nature of teachers work was being extended beyond their sort of day-to-day curriculum delivery work and and their normal supervisory juices in in playgrounds and bus juices and so on. 

And they seem to I'd be increasingly including a range of what we might call health and well-being tasks around children's connectivity children's mental well-being. 

00:01:31 Prof Tony Rossi 

A whole raft of policy matters around how to deal with particular incidents in schools and so on, and and therefore the necessary If if you like being informed about children with particular needs within within particular schools. So with OK, whilst we know this is happening we don't know to what extent and and in a sense, how much of A teachers day it might take up, or how much of how much of their overall how much of a proportion of their overall time as teachers and is this consuming? 

00:02:19 Prof Tony Rossi 

So we wrote a proposal for the Australian Research Council and we we got the money and and we set about a three-year project trying to get a strong sense of what it was that teachers were doing and and indeed how we might categorize that work. And if and and one of the features of the project was, could we actually assign a dollar value to this work And we we got a one of the UQ economists on the on the project to help us with that component and then it turned out that yes, you could ascribe a dollar value to the nature of that work. If it could be described cleanly enough. And so we set about doing that. 

00:03:14 Prof Tony Rossi 

Now we said about interviewing teachers, but we also did time use Diaries to try and capture not just what it was that teachers were doing and how we might categorize that type of work, but also how much time they were spending doing it. 

00:03:31 Prof Tony Rossi 

And then and then the Economist and the team was able to, if you like, put a dollar value to it and it and it. One way that you could think about this was if this was, if this was construed as health work and that is work that was associated with the health and well-being of young people. 

00:03:52 Prof Tony Rossi 

What could we argue? That that was part of the educational budget that was potentially cross subsidising the health budget. It seems like a long straw to draw, but in actual fact we're able to demonstrate that the type of work that might be construed as health work going on in. 

00:04:14 Prof Tony Rossi 

The schools in Queensland in particular, we didn't, we didn't scale this up to national but across the schools in Queensland actually represented a very, very significant dollar value and and we could potentially say, OK, that that was it wasn't so much money being taken from the education system, but it was work being done that was being paid for by the education system that was being attributed to what we came to describe as as health work. 

00:04:45 Prof Tony Rossi 

So that's how the project came about. That's that's sort of the way we went about it. We did lots of interviews with teachers to get a sense of the work they were doing. We watched them work and did time use Diaries and. And we also did a lot of analysis of documents and pictures that were posted around schools that were associated with health and well-being young people. 

00:05:09 Melisa Chong 

OK. Thank you. That's a good, you know, comprehensive sort of idea of that particular project. So how do you think, you know, help teachers health what it's going to look like in schools? Bit more explicitly. 

00:05:23 Prof Tony Rossi 

Yeah. OK. Well, it varies from school to school, inevitably and I suppose some some people might argue and did. We did in the book that that emerged from the project and the papers that we wrote about it, and that that one could argue that this was the work that was already been done under the auspices of pastoral care. But it was clear that the old pastoral care model really wasn't accommodating. 

00:05:50 Prof Tony Rossi 

And the kind of vigilance that teachers had to have around around youngsters, well-being, were they lonely? Were they at risk? 

00:06:00 Prof Tony Rossi 

Could any risks be identified from the wipes children had outside of schools? Were there any medical requirements that teachers had to be across and potentially know how to deal with in an emergency? Were there other matters associated with? 

00:06:23 Prof Tony Rossi 

Yeah, the sort of the the relatively conventional, but I suppose no less important things around how children were managing their lives in terms of of diet, were they adequately active, where they did, they have the kinds of opportunities to be active. 

00:06:42 Prof Tony Rossi 

Were schools providing those kinds of opportunities and some of this was, of course, embedded in the curriculum as we might imagine and and some of this obviously took place outside of the classroom and and and if you like beyond the conventional sort of learning spaces as we as we tend to think of them. 

00:07:04 Prof Tony Rossi 

I think we we didn't. We didn't do things like have or at least we we we weren't aware of and and we know that it it's it's not really something that teachers do administer medicines that will the sort of thing that they were doing and and indeed that's not something which is allowed on the most most educational authority rules and requirements. And but they were monitoring youngsters in a much broader sense and and monitoring sounds like a a bit of an overwhelming word that they. 

00:07:36 Prof Tony Rossi 

They didn't have these kids under surveillance, but there has to be vigilant that that young people were. 

00:07:47 Prof Tony Rossi 

Now, in a sense as well as they could be, and were there any signs of of that being otherwise? And if so, what were the reporting lines? How did they find out if kids were OK? What were the records they might have had in schools? And so on. So in a sense, they the work became quite quite comprehensive. 

00:08:15 Prof Tony Rossi 

And and some of this stuff, you might think, OK, that that it was right down at the health and safety level. You know, sort of pretty old and typical school rules about not running in corridors right. The way sort of up and then through the correct term around how how children might make healthy choices both in and beyond beyond schools? 

00:08:40 Prof Tony Rossi 

So we realized that the the spectrum where that was a word that were years of health work was actually quite diverse and and Louise Mcquade, who was in the research team sort of came up with this idea of a health spectrum, which seemed to capture the kinds of work that Teachers were doing. 

00:09:02 Prof Tony Rossi 

And in schools that that were, if you like, identifiable and therefore were able to be categorized and and that and that spectrum can be found in the book that emerged out of the project. 

00:09:18 Melisa Chong 

You wanna tell us what the book is? 

00:09:20 Prof Tony Rossi 

The book is called teachers health workers. That's its main title. The authors are Louise Mcquay at door McDonald, Emma Enright and myself. We were all during the course of the project at the University of Queensland and the book actually came into publication and and was released, and some of us have moved on a little bit. But that project was housed and run by staff at the University of QLD. 

00:09:54 Melisa Chong 

OK, so to end this off, you know how. So how do you think this research is significant to teach us? 

00:10:02 Prof Tony Rossi 

Yeah. Look, I I think that's a good question. We did, we did realise probably fairly quickly the the degree of in some cases, stress. Now, in other cases, increases in degrees of responsibility that this was placing on on T-shirts and and some of the stories and I I think you know again in the book we we capture these stories really comprehensively and perhaps more than we do in the research papers that we wrote. 

But it it was clear that that teachers in some cases really felt the burden of this uh. Other teachers? 

00:10:49 Prof Tony Rossi 

And when I say burden, they don't mean it was a burden that they didn't want the the, the, the burden they considered to be important. 

00:10:57 Prof Tony Rossi 

It's just that they took that burden outside of the school with them and it and it, and it sort of played on their own health and well-being. Other teachers simply saw it as an obligation and a responsibility and and we're able to separate that from their home labs, it's sort of depended on on the School. It depended on where the school was located in some respects um But all schools, regardless, right across the educational sector, right across the socioeconomic index. 

00:11:32 Prof Tony Rossi 

We saw and we had many schools which which span those those divisions and categories Pretty much all teachers were engaged in this. This type of work. The reason it's important, I think, is that we do have to understand that that teachers are under a normal stress and this seems to be adding to. Right. 

00:11:51 Prof Tony Rossi 

The the level of responsibility now for Children's Health and well-being particularly as we began to increasingly understand the level of mental health challenges that young people are facing it it it adds to the intensity of teachers work. 

00:12:11 Prof Tony Rossi 

Now you know, can we actually do anything about that in terms of pay or conditions? Well, that's not something we can answer here. But what we can do is I highlight the the the the conditions under which the teachers are working and the challenges that they face. And where it might be necessary for Teachers to go to or support for themselves, or indeed how broader school systems or and individual schools might manage this in terms of how they support their staff. Most schools that are pretty much all schools that we went to were really supportive of their staff. And that they tried their level best to ensure that they had a a range of commitments and obligations in terms of teaching across different age groups, different types of youngsters, different diverse needs, and so on. 

00:13:14 Prof Tony Rossi 

But sometimes we do forget that the more burdens you had to teachers work potentially the less effective they become and and and and it's unfair, I think, to to simply assume that teachers can take on additional burdens and that there be no cost. There is a chapter in the book that talks about cost, some of it, some of it is around financial cost and some of it was about the cost to individual teachers themselves. And it's a compelling chapter in the book and and that alone is worth reading, I think, by people who make decisions about what it is that teachers do under the auspices of their job. 

00:14:03 Melisa Chong 

OK. Thank you very much. Tony, I think you know hopefully our audience today have got, you know, a bit more understanding on teachers health work and would you know it sounds very interesting. You know, we will be very keen to have a rate and I thank you so much for your time today. 

00:14:20 Prof Tony Rossi 

OK. You're welcome. Thanks for asking me.