Social (Dis)Integration: Using Social Ties and Networks to Understand Potential Sources of and Leverage Points for Middle School Special Education Teachers’ Burnout

Teachers’ social ties to colleagues are a key conduit of instructional and classroom management resources, and social and emotional support to meet teaching challenges. We argue that special education teachers’ formal and informal collegial ties are malleable contributors to factors that undergird their burnout. Using U.S. middle schools as an example, we use social network constructs and longitudinal analyses to demonstrate the limited extent to which special educators formally assigned to interdisciplinary teams actually forge and maintain constructive ties with their assigned colleagues. Furthermore, we describe the collegial qualities of the ties that special educators do form with general educators. By investigating the naturally occurring social ties of special educators within a prevalent social organization of teachers, we can identify strategies to help administrators align the formal and informal social structure of teachers, and interventions to support the qualities of special educators that promote strong ties to general educators, thereby increasing the social integration of special education teachers.