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In the present study, we examined bidirectional associations between two components of teachers' burnout (personal accomplishment and emotional exhaustion) and classroom relational climate (closeness and conflict) across two time points within an academic year. Participants included 330 elementary school teachers (third and fourth grade) and 5081 students in a large, urban city in the northeastern United States. Students were primarily Hispanic/Latino (66%) or Black/African American (22%), and most were from low-income households. Forty-seven percent of teachers were White, 25% Black, and 31% identified as Hispanic/Latino. Two modeling approaches were used for preliminary detection of bidirectional relations among burnout and classroom relational climate. First, a crossed-lagged panel model showed a clear pattern from earlier relational climate to later burnout; closeness and conflict at Time 1 predicted personal accomplishment at Time 2, and conflict at Time 1 predicted emotional exhaustion at Time 2. No evidence was found for earlier burnout predicting later relational climate. Second, a set of latent change score models indicated that increases in closeness from Time 1 to Time 2 were associated with decreases in emotional exhaustion across the academic year. Together, findings provide preliminary evidence for associations from classroom relational climate to teacher burnout, but not the other way around. Implications of these findings for teachers and school psychologists are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Strategic implementation leadership is a critical determinant of successful implementation, hypothesized to create a more supportive implementation climate conducive to the adoption and use of evidence-based practices. Implementation leadership behaviors may vary significantly across contexts, necessitating studies that examine the validity of established measurement tools in novel health service delivery sectors. The education sector is the most common site for delivering mental health services to children and adolescents in the USA, but research focused on implementation leadership in schools is in the early phases, and there is a need for adaptation and expansion of instruments in order to tailor to the school context. The current study adapted and validated the School Implementation Leadership Scale (SILS) (based on the Implementation Leadership Scale) in a sample of elementary school personnel from six school districts who were implementing one of two well-established prevention programs for supporting children's mental health.Methods: Participants were 441 public school teachers from 52 elementary schools in the Midwest and West Coast of the USA. Participants completed a survey that contained: (1) an adapted and expanded version of the SILS with additional items generated for four existing subscales as well as three new subscales (communication, vision/mission, and availability), and (2) additional tools to evaluate convergent and divergent validity (i.e., measures of general/molar leadership and teaching attitudes). Data underwent (1) examination of item characteristic curves to reduce items and ensure a pragmatic instrument, (2) confirmatory factor analyses to establish structural validity, and (3) evaluation of convergent and divergent validity.Results: Item reduction analyses resulted in seven subscales of three items each. Results indicated acceptable fit for a seven-factor structural model (CFI = .995, TLI = .99, RMSEA = .07, SRMR = 0.02). Second-order factor loadings were high (λ = .89 to .96), suggesting that the SILS subscales comprise a higher-order implementation leadership factor. All subscales demonstrated good inter-item reliability (α = .91-.96). Convergent and divergent validity results were generally as hypothesized, with moderate to high correlations between SILS subscales and general leadership, moderate correlations with teaching attitudes, and low correlations with school demographics.Conclusions: Overall, results provided strong structural, convergent, and divergent validity evidence for the 21-item, 7-factor SILS instrument. Implications for the measurement of implementation leadership in schools are discussed, as well as strategies to support leaders to enhance their strategic behaviors related to the implementation of mental health prevention programs (e.g., adaptation of existing leadership-focused implementation strategies). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In preschool, Black children are overrepresented in percentages of children suspended or expelled. Teachers' perceptions of and responses to children displaying disruptive behavior may be different depending on the race of the teacher and child. Although teacher-child race match is associated with a number of outcomes in K-12 students, research examining these links in preschool is limited. This study examined whether teachers' reported trajectories of children's disruptive behavior and use of discipline practices varied depending on teacher and child race in a sample of 349 preschoolers and their 144 teachers. Results indicated that teacher and child race were associated with teachers' ratings of children's disruptive behavior and reported use of exclusionary discipline practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teaching is a uniquely stressful profession. Though previous work has drawn attention to the high levels of burnout teachers report experiencing and its impact on students, comparatively less work has investigated what influences teachers' burnout itself. Guided by Lazarus' (1991) transactional model of stress and coping, the present study explored the links between the proximal resource of teachers' relationships with students and burnout. Specifically, we investigated the association between classroom aggregated teacher reports of relational closeness and conflict, and two components of burnout: personal accomplishment and emotional exhaustion. Results indicated that teachers who reported close relationships with their students also reported higher levels of personal accomplishment over the academic year, whereas more conflictual relationships were associated with increased emotional exhaustion. Implications for relational quality with students as a central influence on teachers' wellbeing are discussed. • Closeness with students predicted increased teacher personal accomplishment. • Conflict with students predicted increased teacher emotional exhaustion. • Extreme conflict was not associated with teachers' personal accomplishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding psychological processes underlying change in teachers' psychological functioning is crucial to identifying the developmental processes at play. Guided by self-determination theory, this study uses a sample of 330 teachers in the northeastern United States of America to examine if initial levels of teachers' basic psychological needs (i.e., global psychological need satisfaction, autonomy, competence, relatedness) are associated with change in components of psychological functioning over time. Results indicate that most psychological needs are unassociated with change in psychological functioning, raising questions about how and when those needs are implicated to support teachers. Implications for research and practice are discussed. • A novel operationalization of basic psychological needs was examined related to change in teachers' well-being. • Global psychological need satisfaction was negatively associated with negative affect over one academic year. • Autonomy was positively associated personal accomplishment over one academic year. • No other significant associations emerged, raising questions about psychological needs related to change in well-being. • Repeated measures designs can further illuminate teachers' basic psychological needs related to change well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are teachers' growth mindsets associated with the development of growth mindsets in their students? We know that teacher growth mindset (TGM) shapes the attributions teachers make about their students' abilities and can lead to assumptions about the role that perceived stable traits play in students' performance; however, to date, research has not focused on the relationship between TGM and the development of student growth mindset. This study fills a gap in our knowledge by testing this association over time. Findings from an analytic sample of 57 teachers and 1957 intervention students reveal that teachers with growth mindsets have a mild positive and statistically significant association with the development of their students' growth mindsets, particularly for boys. Implications for teacher education, practice, and future research are discussed. • Teacher growth mindset significantly and positively predicts student growth mindset over time. • A directional but non-significant interaction between teacher mindset and student gender on student mindset was obtained. • Lower teacher growth mindset was associated with lower growth mindsets in boys at the end of the school year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students' perceptions of interactions with their teacher lay the stage for future interactions, ultimately influencing students' success in school. While prior work has elucidated what individual and contextual factors contribute to the development of middle and high school students' perceptions, less is known about elementary students' perceptions. As such, the present study leveraged a racially/ethnically diverse sample of third and fourth grade students and teachers in a large, urban district to investigate whether stable student and teacher characteristics (e.g., sex) and observed quality of classroom interactions influenced change in students' perceptions of interactions with their teacher. Results indicated that students rated their teacher more positively from Time 1 to Time 2 when female and in classrooms characterized by positive teacher-student interactions. Unexpectedly, students in classrooms characterized by high Instructional Support rated their teachers less positively over time. Implications for teacher-student relationships and students' academic and social-emotional achievement are discussed. • Female students perceived teachers more positively over time. • Positive classroom interactions predicted more positive student ratings over time. • Instructional support predicted less positive student ratings over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging literature has highlighted the importance of discerning general and strategic organizational context (OC) factors (e.g., leadership and climate) and their interaction effect on individual implementation behaviors (e.g., attitudes toward evidence-based practices; EBPs) in youth mental healthcare. This study aimed to examine how leadership and climate (general and strategic) are associated with implementer attitudes toward EBPs across the individual and organizational levels and their interaction effect in schools. A series of multilevel models (MLMs) were fitted on a diverse sample of schools actively implementing universal prevention programs for youth mental health (441 implementers from 52 schools). The organization-level aggregates and individual educators' perceptions of general and strategic leadership and climate, and their interaction terms, were entered as level-2 and level-1 predictors of four attitudinal dimensions (Requirement, Openness, Appeal, and Divergence) based on their level of measurement. At the organizational level, higher levels of strategic leadership and climate, but not their general counterparts, were consistently associated with more favorable attitudes in all four dimensions. At the individual/within-school level, higher levels of perceived general and strategic leadership and climate were associated with more favorable attitudes of Requirement and Openness. At the organizational/between-school level, general climate moderated the positive effect of strategic climate on implementers' perception of appeal and divergence of EBPs. Our findings indicate that leaders should make data-based decisions to allocate resources on strategic and/or general leadership and climate to foster favorable staff attitudes toward EBPs based on the level of measurement, implementation-specificity, and attitudinal dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: More than two-thirds of youth experience trauma during childhood, and up to 1 in 5 of these youth develops posttraumatic stress symptoms that significantly impair their functioning. Although trauma-focused cognitive behavior therapy (TF-CBT) has a strong evidence base, it is rarely adopted, delivered with adequate fidelity, or evaluated in the most common setting where youth access mental health services-schools. Given that individual behavior change is ultimately required for successful implementation, even when organizational factors are firmly in place, focusing on individual-level processes represents a potentially parsimonious approach. Beliefs and Attitudes for Successful Implementation in Schools (BASIS) is a pragmatic, motivationally focused multifaceted strategy that augments training and consultation and is designed to target precise mechanisms of behavior change to produce enhanced implementation and youth clinical outcomes. This study protocol describes a hybrid type 2 effectiveness-implementation trial designed to concurrently evaluate the main effects, mediators, and moderators of both the BASIS implementation strategy on implementation outcomes and TF-CBT on youth mental health outcomes.Methods: Using a cluster randomized controlled design, this trial will assign school-based mental health (SMH) clinicians and schools to one of three study arms: (a) enhanced treatment-as-usual (TAU), (b) attention control plus TF-CBT, or (c) BASIS+TF-CBT. With a proposed sample of 120 SMH clinicians who will each recruit 4-6 youth with a history of trauma (480 children), this project will gather data across 12 different time points to address two project aims. Aim 1 will evaluate, relative to an enhanced TAU condition, the effects of TF-CBT on identified mechanisms of change, youth mental health outcomes, and intervention costs and cost-effectiveness. Aim 2 will compare the effects of BASIS against an attention control plus TF-CBT condition on theoretical mechanisms of clinician behavior change and implementation outcomes, as well as examine costs and cost-effectiveness.Discussion: This study will generate critical knowledge about the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of BASIS-a pragmatic, theory-driven, and generalizable implementation strategy designed to enhance motivation-to increase the yield of evidence-based practice training and consultation, as well as the effectiveness of TF-CBT in a novel service setting.Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov registration number NCT04451161 . Registered on June 30, 2020. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]