Time use, time poverty and teachers’ work
Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 127 No 8, 2 November 2022, page no. 17
Education systems and teacher unions have long expressed concern regarding the intensification of the demands of teaching and school leadership.
Challenges with retaining early career teachers and recruiting new teachers are often blamed on increasing teacher workload and associated burnout.
The QTU is partnering with Queensland University of Technology in an Australian Research Council linkage project called “Time use, time poverty and teachers’ work”.
The research team define time poverty as the relationship between two variables, which are (1) the amount of work a teacher does, and (2) the intensity of that work. An increase in either can leave individuals feeling “out of time”. An increase in both makes this feeling of time poverty seem almost unbearable.
The QTU knows that time poverty is becoming a common experience. This plays out in perceptions of an acceleration in job demands and can link to feelings of stress, burn-out and dissatisfaction.
The primary aim of the project is to investigate teachers’ and school leaders’ workload and work intensification. This will provide important information for the QTU, education systems, and schools, which we hope will lead to interventions at the systems and local level. The secondary aim of this study is to examine how teachers manage the intensification of their work, with a particular emphasis on commercial digital tools marketed to them as time saving devices.
Previous phases of the research have led to the development of an iPhone/Android app that acts as a digital diary of time-use. The app has been designed to collect data on contact time, non-contact time, and time spent on tasks outside of school hours. To capture information on intensification, the app also collects data on how time is experienced, such as whether or not there is “enough” time within the day.
In Term 4, the project will be working through its next phase, and the project team have been meeting with members throughout the state. Professor Greg Thompson, Associate Professor Nicole Mockler, Dr Anna Hogan and Dr Meghan Stacey have been welcomed as presenters at recent QTU events, including Area Council meetings, the Education Leaders Conference, and Union Reps Conferences.
The current phase of the project is recruiting 200 teachers/principals who will use the app to record time use for multiple 30-minute periods. This pilot sample will be drawn from the membership of the QTU. This phase seeks to enable analysis within the sample to suggest who may be experiencing this intensification of the work the most, and at what times. It will also act as a “proof of concept” for the embedded, coded analysis of teachers’ and school leaders’ time use.