Special Educator Burnout and Fidelity in Implementing Behavior Support Plans: A Call to Action

Abstract

Special education teachers have one of the most challenging and stressful jobs in public education, which often leads to increased burnout. High levels of burnout have, in turn, been related to lower levels of fidelity of implementation in delivery of evidence-based behavior interventions. The purpose of this position paper is to (a) propose exploration of several potential malleable factors related to burnout of special educators serving students with and at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders, (b) link those suggestions to theoretical frameworks, (c) discuss the relation between burnout and fidelity, and (d) suggest measures that may be used to pursue this research, with the ultimate goal of helping the field discover means of intervention to remediate and prevent burnout.

School Leadership, Climate, and Professional Isolation as Predictors of Special Education Teachers’ Stress and Coping Profiles

“…The present study examined aspects of the first components of Garwood's (2023) model, that is, factors that precede and contribute to special education teacher burnout. Beyond burnout, the Garwood model was intended to explain factors that predicted teachers' of SWDs implementation of effective BSPs.…”

“…We drew upon Garwood's (2023) model to identify contextual predictors of stress and coping patterns. The data indicated that teachers in the maladaptive group were distinguished by several contextual variables.…”

“…In this special series, Garwood (2023) provided a compelling theory-based framework for understanding special educator burnout and its relation to implementation skills and impact. The framework integrates several prominent theories to identify key leverage points in intervening in special education teacher burnout and in turn producing higher quality implementation of interventions which benefit SWDs.…”

“…Using Garwood's (2023) framework as a foundation, we propose considering the role of stress and coping for teachers of students with EBD as an additional lever to lower teacher burnout risk, and in turn promote better BSP implementation fidelity. Burnout can be conceptualized as a late-stage condition that results from chronic occupation stress (Maslach, 2003).…”

“…It is important to note that this was a correlational study and therefore causal inferences are not warranted. However, the model provided by Garwood (2023) suggests causal relations between many of these contextual factors and teacher burnout. Thus, future work is needed to continue to examine the relations among these variables; prominent candidates that emerge as consistent predictors of special education teachers stress can then be manipulated in experimental designs to determine their causal roles.…”