UMass Global School of Education faculty share research at Ireland International Conference on Education

UMass Global faculty members Jessica Bogunovich (L) and Kimberly Greene (R) stand side by side behind a podium. Behind them are three identical posters that read "IICE: Ireland International Conference on Education "above the URL www.iicedu.org. Photo courtesy of Kimberly Greene.

IRVINE, Calif. (May 2, 2023) – It’s no secret that although teaching can be a very rewarding profession, it can also be a very stressful experience. Recognizing this, Jessica Bogunovich and Kimberly Greene are among the University of Massachusetts Global School of Education faculty researching how to reinforce the altruistic motivations that often lead people into the teaching profession.

Bogunovich and Greene both participated in the Ireland International Conference on Education, which took place April 11 through 13 in the seaside community of Dún Laoghaire, south of central Dublin. The UMass Global faculty members delivered a presentation on a concept called PRAE, which stands for Professional Reciprocal Altruism in Education.

“PRAE helps educators realize their passion for the field and align their personal values with the teaching practice and greater community of scholars,” Bogunovich explained.

The faculty members submitted a paper, “Professional Reciprocal Altruism in Education: Employing PRAE to Combat Compassion Fatigue and Educator Empathy Exhaustion,” that deals with teachers’ needs to be assured that the values that led them into the profession are supported within the communities where they work. Teachers can experience frustration and even burnout when they must expend their energy on bureaucratic tasks or scrounging for supplies instead of serving their students.

“PRAE provides a transformative paradigm for understanding the way education is perceived by the teacher in an effort to modify the actions of a siloed experience to that of a larger community of practice and collaborative partnerships,” Bogunovich and Greene write. “It moves one forward from novice to practitioner to expert within the CoP because of the authentic, legitimate participation the teacher is engaged in. When this realization is purposefully integrated into an individual’s paradigm, it creates a sense of support and belonging that will further motivate teachers to stay within the field of education, continuing to grow and develop into educational leaders.”