Led by Glenys Oberg from the University of Queensland, the study delved into the experiences of 57 Australian educators, revealing they endured a profound ‘moral injury’ in their roles.
With roots in military psychology, the term encapsulates the ethical conflict and emotional challenges teachers now confront in schools, Oberg suggests.
A strong negative sentiment around school leadership emerged from teachers’ accounts, with participants speaking to a deep erosion of trust – a disintegration teachers attributed to unfulfilled promises and leaders’ perceived inability to provide meaningful support when and where it mattered most.
“Teachers shared experiences of feeling ignored, dismissed, or sacrificed for institutional priorities,” the study found.
One teacher described a situation where a senior colleague drew attention to the extent of the breakdown:
“The situation happened at our school to the point where one of our long-term teachers, 25 years, got up the next week and gave a very clear presentation about trust and how there is no longer any trust in teachers in this school, not in the industry, in the school.”
Several teachers emphasised that leadership seemed to be more focused on optics than addressing on-the-ground needs.
“The leadership team seems more interested in looking good than actually supporting us when it matters most,” one teacher reported.
A sense of being not listened to was also a common theme.
“We keep flagging the same issues every year, and the silence from leadership is deafening,” one teacher said.
One Victorian secondary teacher told EducationHQ a huge barrier between leadership and teaching staff had formed at her public school.
“I think there tends to be this ‘us and them’ approach – that’s the dialogue amongst staff.
“Teachers feel like the two are not aligned, and I think sometimes the objectives of the teaching staff and the objectives of the leadership are actually separate things, in the sense that maybe the [principal] is there to enact the departmental ‘language’ and the teachers are there to enact the reality.”
Earlier this year staff had completed an annual survey canvassing their attitudes to the school, the findings of which showed marked declines around teachers’ trust in school leadership.
The teacher says she, along with other middle leaders, was asked to attend a one-on-one session with the principal to discuss why the trust indicators were going down and to suggest potential solutions.
It was an awkward situation to be placed in, the teacher reflects.
“We came with our honest opinions to talk about why we thought that was the case, and then the response, I think, was quite defensive ... so now we’re even more down in the dumps about it.”
Trust could start to be rebuilt if leaders gave teachers more flexibility and autonomy in their working lives, one teacher told EducationHQ.
A pattern of broken promises sat behind teachers’ growing distrust of school leaders, with participants reporting frustration over their tendency to announce initiatives or to make commitments that never came to fruition.
One NSW primary school teacher spoke of a repeatedly delayed initiative in their context:
“The training promised during our last professional development day didn’t happen. They keep saying it will, but we’ve stopped believing them.”
Oberg suggests this failure to follow through on commitments “left teachers without the skills or resources they needed, but also eroded their faith in future commitments”.
Another teacher in the study explained the promise of extra classroom support that never happened.
“They said we’d have a new classroom aide, but here we are, months later, still waiting. You can’t run a proper classroom under these conditions.”
The lack of basic practical support from above led teachers to conclude that leadership “prioritised external appearances over internal functionality”, the study found.
Cynicism and demoralisation were evident in teachers’ accounts of the situation.
“Leadership talks about support for trauma-informed practices, but nothing changes in our classrooms. It’s all talk,” one teacher shared.
Another noted that “promises made at the beginning of the year are forgotten as soon as the challenges arise”.
Yet the Victorian teacher we spoke to acknowledged the many pressures and responsibilities bearing down on school leaders.
“They’re in a tricky position,” she conceded.
They’ve got to deliver their AIP (Annual Implementation Plan) objectives, all these departmental outcomes.
“And they get measured, as a leader, on whether their school has met all of their objectives.
“And I think a lot of the time they can get swept up in that purpose and forget that the actual day-to-day, you know, realistic operations of the school.
“Keeping trust amongst staff members requires them to sometimes abandon that for a while and deal with the realities of what they see in front of them.”
Yet positive case studies also arose from the study, with some teachers describing how collaborative decision-making processes helped to relieve tensions between staff and executive.
“Our leadership team involved us in creating a new behaviour management framework. Having a say in the process made all the difference – it felt like our voices mattered,” one reported.
The Victorian teacher said trust could start to be rebuilt if leaders gave teachers more flexibility and autonomy in their working lives, and weren’t so fixated on ‘mean-spirited’ things like calling staff out for leaving meetings five minutes early and the like.
“I think the trust can be more of a top-down thing. And I think it should be that we are treated like professionals in a workspace in which we are given the respect and the autonomy that we deserve, and that we’re supported to feel we know what we’re doing.”
