Teacher workload and its contribution to insufficient recruitment and retention is a prominent theme in recent research on teachers’ work (Heffernan et al., 2022; Stacey et al., 2024). In addition to increased work hours, there has been an intensification of teachers’ work, with time poverty and increasingly complex demands outstripping resourcing (Longmuir et al., 2023). Our study of secondary English teachers’ intentions to leave or stay in the profession confirmed that workload is a significant issue. However, we also found that beneath the headline issue of workload, other more complex tensions and conflicts are contributing to the ‘wear and tear’ on teachers’ wellbeing and job quality. Our commentary in this blog post highlights how ‘moral injury’ is contributing to crisis conditions in the teaching profession.

We investigated the perceptions of the working life of secondary school English teachers in Victoria, Australia in the post-Covid era, sponsored by the Victorian Association for the Teaching of English (VATE). The mixed-methods study used a survey tool, with open text boxes under the questions for each topic. There were 179 responses with more than 90 written comments. Additionally, we conducted 28 follow-up semi-structured interviews.

‘Moral injury occurs when people feel compelled to perform actions that betray their moral principles.’

The survey responses indicated that a significant minority – 42 per cent – intended to leave the teaching profession within the next five years. The number one reason cited was workload, with stress and declining teacher wellbeing also significant reasons. However, it is not only the total number of hours worked contributing to these pressures, but also the emotional toll exacted when teachers do not feel that they have the time and resources to do their jobs properly or that they are subject to priorities that do not align with their ethical commitments.

Such moral injury occurs when people feel compelled to perform actions that betray their moral principles. Teachers’ moral injury may occur when they have experiences that ‘hurt them emotionally’ and cause ‘unwanted changes to their self-concept and sense of ease in the world’ (Cohen Lissman et al., 2024). We identified three different types of moral injury occurring for teachers within the larger issue of workload.

The most prominent form of moral injury reported was an unresolved conflict between the level of care teachers wish to extend to students and what is possible with overwork and resourcing gaps. There were many comments about the increasingly complex needs of students in an education system, such as:

‘I find the behaviour of students, coupled with their individual needs (learning, wellbeing or other) has become increasingly difficult to navigate.’

In addition, the rationing of time and resources, often by governments, meant that:

‘It’s simply not sustainable – the expectations are growing but the time allowance is not.’

A second type of moral injury was the conflict between educational aims and priorities set by a marketised and neoliberal education system and society. This injury was to a teacher’s sense of being recognised and valued by school leadership, parents or the wider community. As one teacher reported:

‘Schools are becoming businesses in which parents are clients and students are the product. Ugh. I’ve had enough.’

A third moral injury was experienced as conflict between workload and other responsibilities – to self-care and domestic life – which are compromised by unsustainable workloads – exemplified by one teacher asserting:

‘It has very quickly become clear to me that I cannot sustain the mental, physical and emotional demands of the profession for anything approaching an entire “career”.’

Our study shows that treating teacher workload issues as only a question of time and resourcing will not address some of the moral injuries that teachers are sustaining and are driving them out of classrooms. Greater autonomy and support to make decisions in line with ethical commitments and professional values will help sustain teachers in the profession.

References

Cohen Lissman, D., Adkins-Cartee, M. R., Rosiek, J., & Springer, S. (2024). Moral injury and moral traps in teaching: Learning from the pandemic. Journal of Moral Education, 53(3), 519–546. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057240.2023.2237202

Diamond, F., & Bulfin, S. (2024). Sustaining English teaching: Voices of crisis, challenge, imaginations and resistance. Idiom, 60(1), 5–8.

Heffernan, A., Bright, D., Kim, M., Longmuir, F., & Magyar, B. (2022). ‘I cannot sustain the workload and the emotional toll’: Reasons behind Australian teachers’ intentions to leave the profession. Australian Journal of Education, 66(2), 196–209. https://doi.org/10.1177/00049441221086654

Longmuir, F., Gallo Cordoba, B., Phillips, M., Allen, K.-A., & Moharami, M. (2022). Australian teachers’ perceptions of their work in 2022. Monash University. https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/3061169/Teachers-Perceptions-of-their-Work-2022.pdf

Stacey, M., Gavin, M., Fitzgerald, S., McGrath-Champ, S., & Wilson, R. (2024). Reducing teachers’ workload or deskilling ‘core’ work? Analysis of a policy response to teacher workload demands. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 45(2), 187–199. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2023.2271856