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Risk and Resilience Factors for School Communities

Drawing upon risk and resilience theory and ecological systems frameworks, my research interest lies in exploring the individual and contextual risk and resilience factors that impact school communities and their members. I have conducted network analysis, structural equation modeling, multiple regression, and qualitative interview analysis to identify teachers' and principals' risk and resilience factors during the pandemic and recovery. This work extends to various educator subgroups, including first-year new teachers, K-12 teachers, and those pioneering early universal pre-kindergarten policies such as transitional kindergarten educators working with four-year-olds. ​

 

My inquiries have further delved into specific areas, exploring aspects like social-emotional competencies for both students and teachers, student exposure to bullying, and teacher victimization. Moving forward, I am keen to broaden the scope of my research to delve deeper into such elements that influence educational environments, aiming to contribute valuable insights into the creation of more resilient and supportive school communities.

A Longitudinal and Qualitative Analysis of New Teachers' Risk and Resilience During COVID-19 

Teacher turnover has been a longstanding problem, and the pandemic exacerbated the issue by posing additional challenges to teachers. This situation is particularly dire for new teachers who have the highest turnover rates and are vulnerable to such circumstances. However, there is a dearth of studies focusing specifically on new teachers in these circumstances. This study sought to fill this gap by applying a longitudinal and qualitative approach to examine new teachers’ perceived well-being and the fluctuating risk and resilience factors during COVID-19. Findings identified consistent individual- and contextual-level factors which protect or hinder new teachers’ well-being throughout the past two academic years. 

Rho, E., Liu, B., Yang, C. & Stomski, M. (2023, April 13-16). A longitudinal and qualitative approach to new teachers’ risk and resilience during COVID-19. American Educational Research Association (AERA) 2023 Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, United States. https://doi.org/10.3102/2016428.

Risk and Resilience Factors Contributing to K-12 Teachers' Mental Health Wellbeing During the Post-Pandemic Recovery

The study investigated risk and resilience factors affecting the mental health of 507 K-12 teachers during the post-pandemic recovery period, with a particular focus on the impact of teacher victimization. The research aimed to determine the prevalence of psychological distress among teachers and examine how self-efficacy, collective efficacy, school connectedness, and school climate could mitigate the effects of victimization.

Regression analyses indicated that teacher victimization significantly contributed to psychological distress and decreased well-being. Additionally, moderation analyses showed that self-efficacy, collective efficacy, and school connectedness effectively reduced the negative impact of victimization on teachers' mental health. Conversely, school climate did not significantly moderate this relationship, suggesting that broader school environment factors may not directly buffer the specific effects of victimization.

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Rho, E., Yang, C. & Dong, Q. (2024, May). Risk and resilience factors contributing to K-12 teachers' mental health wellbeing during the post-pandemic recovery. [Paper Presentation]. Society for Prevention Research (SPR) 2024 Annual Meeting, Washington, DC.

New Teacher Empowerment and Silence

We carried out a constructivist grounded theory-based qualitative exploration of factors that contribute to new teachers’ empowerment and silence during the pandemic among a sample of 24 first-year new teachers from a large and diverse urban school district in northern California. The findings identified different sets of psychological and social-structural factors contributing to new teachers’ empowerment and silence, respectively. Factors contributing to empowerment included autonomy and a sense of accomplishment in the psychological domain and support, appreciation or being acknowledged, and shared beliefs in the social-structural domain. Factors contributing to silence included a lack of self-efficacy in the psychological domain and being limited in the decision-making process, a lack of connected and safe space, and a lack of knowledge of unwritten school norms and procedures in the social-structural domain. Findings suggest that empowerment and silence might be dual-factor constructs driven by different sets of factors that do not fully mirror each other.

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Yang, C., Rho, E., Lin, X., & Stomski, M. (in press). Empowerment and silence: A grounded-theory exploration among new teachers. School Psychology.

Principals' Compassion Fatigue and Satisfaction

Guided by the job demands-resources model and dual-factor model of mental health, this study used a mixed-method survey to examine principals' experiences with job demands, resources, and their compassion fatigue and satisfaction in the context of post-pandemic recovery based on a survey study conducted among 247 principals in California. Qualitative and quantitative analyses on survey responses suggested that staffing shortages, the spillover effect of COVID-19, the school community’s needs, as well as workload were identified as top stressors. Regression and path analyses demonstrated a significant and positive association between stressors and compassion fatigue, while self-efficacy and professional support were significantly associated with increased compassion satisfaction among principals. Although district-level connectedness was not strongly associated with compassion fatigue and satisfaction, the positive association between stressors and compassion fatigue was intensified among principals who perceived a stronger sense of district connectedness. Moreover, qualitative analyses revealed that promoting connectedness at district levels via community of practices is one critical attribute to principal’s support system. The findings highlight the interactive and multifaceted nature of the association between principal’s job demands and resources and their wellbeing.

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Yang, C., Rho, E., Lim, J. & Cheung, R. (under review). Principals' Compassion Fatigue and Compassion Satisfaction: A Job Demands and Resources Analysis During the Post-Pandemic Recovery.

Associations Between School-wide Practices and School-wide Bullying: Teachers' Perspectives from the U.S. and China 

To understand the role of different school-wide practices in school-wide bullying prevention in the global context, this present study was guided by the social-ecological framework to examine cross-country similarities and differences in the association between three forms of school-wide practices (i.e., punitive, positive, and social and emotional learning [SEL] practices) and school-wide bullying and between United States (n=1,833) and Chinese (n=1,627) teachers from middle and high schools. Measurement invariance tests confirmed that the associations between the three forms of school-wide practices and school-wide bullying were comparable across the two countries. Results of multilevel analyses suggested that more frequent positive practices at the between-school level was associated with increased school-wide bullying in the U.S. but decreased school-wide bullying in the Chinese. Also, more frequent punitive practices at the within-school level were associated with increased school-wide bullying in both the U.S. and Chinese samples, and this positive association between punitive practices and school-wide bullying was significantly stronger in the Chinese sample than in the U.S. sample. More frequent punitive practices at the between-school level were also associated with increased school-wide bullying in the U.S. sample, but not in the Chinese sample. Moreover, the frequent SEL practices at the within-school level were significantly associated with decreased school-wide bullying in the U.S. but not in China; the frequent SEL practices at the between-school level were associated with decreased school-wide bullying in the U.S. but increased school-wide bullying in China.

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Yang, C., Dong, Q., Rho, E. & Teng, Z. (2023). Associations between school-wide positive, punitive, and social and emotional Learning (SEL) practices and school-wide bullying: Advancing the cross-country understanding of teachers' perspectives from the U.S. and China. School Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/spq0000557.

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Copyright © Ella Rho

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