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This chapter explores three context and education system factors that are implicated in educators’ experiences of stress in the workplace: occupational support, interpersonal relationships, and educational policy changes. More precisely, the first factor concerns occupational support provided to educators to conduct their work with a specific focus on principals’ provision of autonomy support. Autonomy support stems from self-determination theory and refers to the extent to which an authority figure supports individuals’ self-determination in a particular context. The second factor concerns the relational context of teaching with a focus on educators’ relationships with students and colleagues. The third factor concerns the impact of systemic factors in educational policy. For this, we have focused on the impacts of standardized testing and educational innovations. Together, the three overarching factors represent defining features of school and educational systems that shape educators’ work and their experiences of stress in that environment. Overall, our aim is to broaden understanding of the role that schools and educational systems play in educators’ psychological functioning at work.
Relatively little attention has been given to understanding different social and emotional behavior (SEB) profiles among students and their links to important educational outcomes. We applied latent profile analysis to identify SEB profiles among kindergarten students based on five SEBs: cooperative, socially responsible, helpful, anxious, and aggressive-disruptive behavior. In Study 1, we identified SEB profiles among the population of students who attended kindergarten in New South Wales (NSW; Australia's most populous state comprising Australia's largest education jurisdictions), Australia in 2012 (N = 100,776). We also examined whether profile membership was differentially associated with students' socioeducational characteristics (gender, age group, language background, neighborhood socioeconomic status, and learning disability status). Results revealed four different SEB profiles: social-emotional prosocial (SE-Prosocial), SE-Anxious, SE-Aggressive, and SE-Vulnerable groups. Profile membership was associated with the socioeducational characteristics in different ways (e.g., female and older students tended to be in the SE-Prosocial profile). In Study 2, we undertook replication with a different sample of children who attended kindergarten in 2009 in NSW (n = 52,661). We also examined whether the SEB profiles were associated with academic achievement in Grades 3 and 5 using standardized test scores. Results revealed the same four profiles as Study 1 and similarities in how profile membership was associated with the socioeducational characteristics. Moreover, profiles were associated with significantly different levels of achievement in Grades 3 and 5--highest for the SE-Prosocial and lowest for the SE-Vulnerable profiles. Together, the findings have implications for healthy student development and academic intervention.