About SUSTAIN

SUSTAIN is a yearlong workplace intervention in which school leaders and special educators collaborate in facilitated meetings to identify and enhance malleable conditions for teaching. By improving teachers’ working conditions, we improve students’ learning conditions.

Theory of Change

Research has revealed that special educators’ conditions for teaching are linked with positive teacher outcomes–like more manageable workloads and better instructional practices–which, in turn, promote increased student achievement.

How Does SUSTAIN Work?

SUSTAIN is a facilitated intervention adapted from the Healthy Workplace Participatory Program, which has demonstrated efficacy to enhance working conditions and safety in hospitals, factories, and other workplaces, and is currently being tested in schools.

SUSTAIN occurs at the school level, with the special education teachers who work with students with emotional-behavioral disorders (EBD) in self-contained settings engaging in a collaborative problem-solving process with their principal or assistant principal who oversees special education to identify potential changes (e.g., enhanced access to curricular resources, protected planning time) that support special educators workload manageability, conditions for teaching, instructional practices, and wellbeing (via reduced burnout). Given that special educators of students with EBD report systemic and structural challenges preventing them from better serving their students as a primary factor for their burnout, some feasible and relatively easy changes can go a long way.

SUSTAIN is an 8-hour, 8 meeting process across the school-year, facilitated by members of our research team. The timeline and main content of each meeting (called Steps) are provided in the graphics on the right.

Project Goals and Expected Impact

Year 1 (2024-2025)

Iteratively adapt and revise SUSTAIN from the Healthy Workplace Participatory Program via interviews, focus groups, and surveys with 15+ special educators, 9+ school and district leaders, and our advisory board. At the end of Year 1 (June 2025), we’ll have developed SUSTAIN 2.0

Year 2 (2025-2026)

Conduct a field test of SUSTAIN at 4-5 schools in one school district to further inform revisions. We’ll collect data via surveys and interviews from school leaders and special educators participating in SUSTAIN. We’ll continue to adapt SUSTAIN, generating SUSTAIN 3.0 by the end of the year.

Year 3 (2026-2027)

Conduct a cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) with ~30 schools in multiple states to evaluate SUSTAIN’s promise for promoting improved special educators’ conditions for teaching and outcomes as well as students’ academic and behavioral outcomes.

Year 4 (2027-2028)

Continue to collect follow-up data from Year 3 RCT and implement with waitlist control schools. Conduct cost analysis and finalize SUSTAIN manual and materials.

Special education teachers’ conditions for teaching

Read an overview of special educators’ conditions for teaching, often referred to as working conditions.

Special Education Teachers’ Wellbeing and Burnout

Improving the Special Education Teacher Workforce