In October, an expert discussion of the results of the research “Psycho-emotional situation and the teachers’ readiness to psychosocial support” was conducted. This research engaged about 3000 educators at different levels.
This survey is the result of joined work of Resilience.help psychological platform from “Smart Osvita,” scholars from Zhytomyr State University, and international partners: international organization “Americares” and associate professor of the University of Illinois, Dr. Tara Powell, who was a consultant of the Research. The project was supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine. It was a collaboration between governmental institutions, civil society, the academic community, and universities.
“The aim was to examine the psycho-emotional condition of educators in the third year of the war, their ability to provide psychosocial support to the participants of the educational process (knowledge, skills, physical and psychological readiness), and also to check the efficiency of the training at the program “Psychosocial support of educators,” says Tetiana Shyriayeva, psychotherapist, PhD in psychology, member of Resilience.help team.
Tetiana Shyriayeva says that the research was developed in the following way: two representative groups were formed from the school psychologists and teachers who agreed to join the Survey. The first group completed remote learning and the survey, and the second was the control group and only completed the survey.
Participants filled in 2 forms at the same time. The first was about the level of psychological condition. The second was about readiness (capability) to provide psychological support to the participants of the academic process. The research of the test group and the control group (for school psychologists and teachers alike) was done at three different times – at the beginning of the training, right after the end of the training, and one month after completing the training. Such an approach was supposed to show not only a total picture of the psycho-emotional condition of educators and how it changes over time, it also allows measuring the efficiency of the training and the capacity of school psychologists and teachers to study online.
The total duration of the training for school psychologists in the «Psychosocial Support of Educators» Program was 135 hours (4.5 ECTS credits) and 60 hours (2 ECTS credits) for teachers.
This year 61 school psychologists completed the remote learning component of the project and received trainers’ certificates (there were also 20 who completed the training in 2023 during the Program pilot). Then they conducted proper training during practical sessions for almost 500 teachers who also received certificates of career enhancement. From now on, these certified trainers can conduct practical courses for teachers in their communities by themselves and, therefore, scale up the training.
«Our practical course is unique, as, being a component of this project, it was adapted for the education system and contains a big practical component. We did not just take some high quality foreign programm and implemented them, we creatively processed them and proved their efficiency scientifically. Now our goal is to find a common solution to scale up the achieved results in the system of secondary education, higher education, postgraduate education , career enhancement,“enhancement, “ says Oksana Makarenko, co-founder of NGO «Smart Osvita», Head of the project «Psychosocial support of educators».
The efficiency of the practical courses is proved by the results of the research, as stated by researchers from Zhytomyr Ivan Franko National University (ZNU) Natalia Portnytska, Olga Savychenko, and Iryna Tychyna. The main indicators of psycho-emotional condition, which the researchers highlighted were:
- emotional component of mental health;
- social component of mental health
- psychologic component of mental health
- professional burnout
- depression
- anxiety
- general level of stress perception;
- imaginary helplessness
- lack of self-efficacy
The team of project researchers from ZNU highlighted a positive dynamic in the awareness of mental health issues and readiness for psychosocial support in the experimental group compared to the control group. This is confirmed by the results of the research showed in the screenshot:
Also, the researchers have observed the improvement in the psycho-emotional condition of the teachers, for example reduction of anxiety, depression, professional burnout and stress levels, as well as improvement in the psychological, social and emotional components of mental health during and after completion of the training.
Adam Keehn, Director of complex emergencies NGO «Americares» discussed expectations, actual scaling up and the implementation of the research results in other countries that suffered from war.
“The research underlines the resilience of the Ukrainian people, especially educators, who continue doing their important work during this long and painful war. The survey became an extremely important experience for all the participants, and it should be studied and scaled up to other regions that have also suffered from the war. We hope and expect that this survey and the practical experience of the adaptation of the lessons learned will help us better understand the needs of Ukrainian pedagogues and psychologists in order to create efficient programs for them. We are hoping that the results of the project will be beneficial in different aspects: to make managerial decisions to engage teachers and other pedagogues in catering to psychological needs of the children, and could also be scaled up across the whole system of education,” said Adam Keehn.
Anastasia Holotenko, expert of the Coordination center for mental health in the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, Head of the project office on psychology of the Ministry of education and science of Ukraine, discussed the change in the approaches to the organization of the psychological service in the system of education and the Ministry’s vision regarding partnership with the civil society sector to implement those changes.
“The change in the approaches to the work of psychological service in the Ukrainian system of education is long overdue. The priority project of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, implemented within the Ukrainian program of mental health “How are you?” initiated by First Lady Olena Zelenska, is aimed at the psychosocial and psychological support of all the participants in the educational process on all levels of education,” says Anastasia Holotenko.
Anastasia Holotenko adds that the Ministry’s project covers two components: adding mental health and psychosocial support domains to education, and also reconsidering approaches to the work of the psychological service in the education system.
Liliia Hrynevych, vice-rector of Karazin University, former minister of science and education of Ukraine (2016-2019) also joined the discussion. She discussed the professional standard for the teachers that covers psychosocial competencies, and also shared her feedback about the Survey.
“What we are seeing in this project is basically a model educational course for the development of the teachers’ competencies that are defined in the professional standard for the teachers: psychological, emotional-ethical and health protection. I am really impressed by the methodology used in the research and how everything has been arranged. Because we have a lot of different sociology and surveys, but we lack the validity of this research, and I really like the presented survey in terms of the toolkit, sample selection, control group survey design, stages of the survey used here, as we can see what impact this course could have on the target audience,” says Liliia Hrynevych.
Dr. Tara Powell, associate professor at the University of Illinois, supervised the research component of the project and discussed its methodology, results and her feedback about her work with the Ukrainian team.
“It is really difficult to conduct such research in regions that suffered from the conflict. But I think the results of the research will have a long-term impact. We prepared a paper for an academic journal based on it, so that more people all over the world could read and see the results.
We detected significant improvements: teachers who participated in the program improved their readiness to provide psychosocial support, improved their knowledge, and also decreased the stress, anxiety, burnout and depression levels much more, compared to the control group. The wellbeing of the participants also increased significantly,” says Tara Powell.
Victoria Horbunova, Head of the EuroPsy National Committee, Doctor of Psychological Sciences, and psychotherapist, discussed the adaptation and the implementation of the training at the meeting. Victoria has worked for a long time with “Smart Osvita”, she participated in the development of the Resilience.help platform concept, helps to select evidence-based methods for the development of study programs, and is an initiator of the adaptation of the Universal training on mental health which was used as a foundation for the Program “Psychological support of educators.”
“We studied how universal the training is and how it is perceived by the experts in the first line: those who are the gatekeepers to the system, the teachers. How this program could be adapted to the needs that the first-liners have, how new formats could be developed – this is what has been done: we adapted the program and developed an absolutely new format. We also researched how it could be scaled-up, what could be added to it, which modules could be made. If you look into the data, you will see that the pedagogues and the teachers are those experts who use this training, and they are the target audience of the mental health and adaptation training”, says Victoria Horbunova.
The research results, useful recommendations and the exercise will soon be available on Resilience.help platform. The platform was created especially for the educators, where the team posts evidence-based practices that teachers can use to support their own and their students’ mental health.
