Well-Being Is Key to a Strong Early Intervention and Early Childhood Special Education Workforce
Dr. Heather Walter describes the link between well-being and workforce recruitment and retention.
Blog Post
April 19, 2024
Providing early intervention and early childhood special education (EI/ECSE) services to young children with disabilities and their families is important to child and family well-being. Yet the well-being of this workforce is in crisis, and ongoing shortages are causing children and families to miss out on critical services. EI/ECSE practitioners are inadequately paid, which is a major factor tied to practitioner well-being, but not the only factor. To learn more about EI/ECSE workforce well-being, I interviewed Dr. Heather Walter, assistant professor of early childhood special education at George Mason University and lead author of Leading Systems Change: A Framework for Embedding Well-being in EI/ECSE, a chapter of the Division for Early Childhood’s Leadership monograph. Quotes have been edited for length and clarity.
In addition to low pay, what are some of the major factors in low recruitment and retention of the EI/ECSE workforce?
Unrealistic expectations. EI/ECSE professionals often work under unrealistic expectations. They must comply with special education laws, meet standards and instructional expectations, and undergo progress monitoring and assessment to serve an increasingly diverse population of young children and families. They juggle their varied and demanding roles delivering services in a variety of ways including in families’ homes, in their own classrooms or in others’ classrooms, or traveling among several different settings. They often receive little or no support from administrators, leading to fighting for limited resources which ultimately lowers school or agency climates.
Lack of diversity. The EI/ECSE workforce is predominantly female and white. Acknowledging race, ethnicity, and gender in the field is imperative for understanding EI/ECSE workforce well-being. Pay and racial and ethnic disparities perpetuate an oppressive cycle leading to symptoms such as stress and burnout.
What policy changes could better support the recruitment and retention of the EI/ECSE workforce?
More research. Well-being in the EI/ECSE workforce needs to be adequately studied. There are many service providers, agencies, and school settings in which individuals work, which makes it challenging to contextualize. Demographics, results, and implications of EI/ECSE studies are often lumped together with general education, special education overall, or general early childhood education, never indicating what is appropriate for EI and ECSE, specifically.
Policies and resources informed by the workforce. Inviting experts to the table to form policy is critical. This includes those who know the EI/ECSE landscape, not just administrators and superintendents, but individuals impacted by the system, including people with disabilities. Well-being resources and strategies are often provided without the consideration of what teachers need or want. They are not differentiated and practitioners are often blamed for being burned out, stressed, and ineffective, which is unfortunately part of a national narrative. Organizations such as the American Federation of Teachers and the Council for Exceptional Children and its Division for Early Childhood need to recognize teacher well-being and mental health in recommended practices, standards, and policies and create a comprehensive approach that values educators’ time, career, and health.
Whole-system approaches. Most interventions used in schools that are aimed at improving teacher well-being, quality, or retention focus on just one component, such as coaching models or well-being practices. There are not many that support a whole-system approach, embedding well-being practices to support retention at each level of the system using data-based methods. Most interventions have typically focused on decreasing the effects of stressors on undesirable outcomes (e.g., teacher attrition, stress), but generally do not address variability in teachers’ experience of well-being or specific educational contexts. To truly support the workforce, policy, research, and practice need to fully identify both positive and negative indicators of mental health and well-being together, which includes individual and environmental factors to address educators' needs, policy needs, and practice.
Better preparation pathways. There is a need for specific degree programs in EI as it's a different system and is often left out of teacher preparation programs. These programs can preventatively support workforce retention by embedding well-being in a multidimensional way that supports the contexts within all coursework (e.g., modules, coaching, reflective practice groups). Also, many professors in higher education are white. When educators do not look like you, it impacts teaching, learning, and mental health. Not having diverse professors in the field is a significant barrier to admitting and graduating a more diverse EI/ECSE workforce.
Better professional development. If we do not value practitioners, practitioners will leave. We should support them with good adult learning strategies, incorporating practitioner voices and using universal design for learning approaches. Professional development experiences must not be an “add-on” task of “one more thing to do.” Individual well-being strategies that we know have had some efficacy, like mindfulness, self-compassion, and goal-setting, are helpful to individuals but will not solve systemic issues; preventative approaches such as reflective practice groups and one-on-one coaching are necessary.
Are there any promising practices or bright spots that you would like to see replicated?
State EI consortia. The state of Virginia has an extremely active EI Consortium with many universities partnering together (not competing) to expand and enhance EI systems in the Commonwealth. The professors and EI providers in this consortium work together to enhance coursework, professional learning opportunities, and fieldwork placements. They have a grant from the Office of Special Education Programs from the U.S. Department of Education and continuously collaborate on research which leads to publications and presentations at regional, state, and national conferences. This is a critical group as quality field placements are often hard to come by, and enrollment in teacher education programs is low. Working together to problem-solve the quality and quantity issues in EI is essential to long-term sustainability and success.
Whole-system approaches. My colleagues Dr. Christan Coogle and Dr. Kate Mitchem and I will be publishing an activities-based, example-heavy book next fall on data-based systems change for leaders that specifically focuses on the intentional integration of strategies at each level of the system (individual or teacher, interpersonal or school and relationships, and contextual, systems-wide) to enhance effectiveness and quality in an approach that brings multiple voices to the table. EI/ECSE leaders need easy and sustainable solutions to guide decision-making.