ASU psychology doctoral student Leigh McLean outside of her office in the Ira D. Payne Educational Hall on the Tempe campus on Feb. 24, 2015. McLean’s psychology study revealed depression in teachers impacts the classroom learning environment. (Daniel Kwon/ The State Press)
Psychology graduate student Leigh McLean said she always had a passion for psychology and working with children in the classroom, but was always curious about the teachers' role in the classroom and how their behavior impacted students.
McLean decided she would focus her graduate research around the topic of teachers' depression symptoms and how it affected children's performance in the classroom. After the research, McLean concluded students' math scores were in fact lower because of the teachers' symptoms.
“Having known and worked with many teachers in my personal and professional lives, I noticed that many of them seemed to struggle with occupational stress and mental health,” McLean said.
She said she knew how maternal depression affected children’s developments, but always wondered if the same relation existed between teachers and their students.
Along with co-author Carol Connor, a psychology professor and senior learning scientist at ASU Learning Sciences Institute, McLean decided to take her questions and apply them to her graduate research study, where she would study this unique relationship between teachers and young students.
Connor said the results from the study will have a profound impact when applying the results to the real world and hopes that teachers facing these issues will seek help not only for the bettering of themselves, but the bettering of their students also.
"These results contribute to accumulating understanding about the multiple factors that impact student learning," she said. "Teachers' mental health has been off the radar, so to speak, and probably deserves more attention. The next step is to see whether counseling for teachers with symptoms of depression might help them.”
Although their study proved to be very successful, there were some difficulties with conducting the experiment.
Over the course of the study, they collected data across eight schools in Florida, surveying 27 teachers and 523 third grade students. Throughout the year, McLean studied the teachers' self-reported depression symptoms and the mathematics and reading scores of the students yearly.
“Our most important finding was that teachers struggling with more depressive symptoms were less able to create and maintain high-quality classrooms,” McLean said.
McLean also said they found additional data that was also important to their study.
“Obviously, this is a sensitive subject, so most of the difficulties had to do with teachers being apprehensive to open up about such personal questions (dealing with depression). However, our teachers were very open and cooperative with us, and we are so appreciative that they were receptive to this study,” McLean said.
Colleague Nicole Sparapani said McLean is a hard worker and student.
"Leigh is a very enthusiastic student, so when we work together we can quickly produce a high quality manuscript," Sparapani said. "I feel lucky that I've had the opportunity to work with her over the years, and I'm looking forward to collaborating on future research."
While both McLean and Connor enjoyed conducting the study, McLean is not only happy about the success of her study, but also how her research has reached the target population and how its helped with teachers' depression.
“Investigating such an important research question and finding results that can be directly applied to classroom practices was really exciting,” McLean said.
Reach the reporter at sgreene6@asu.edu or follow @thesydneygreene on Twitter.
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