Saharaline: A Collective Social Support Intervention for Teachers in Low-Income Indian Schools

Abstract

This paper presents Saharaline, an intervention designed to provide collective social support for teachers in low-income schools. Implemented as a WhatsApp-based helpline, Saharaline enables teachers to reach out for personalized, long-term assistance with a wide range of problems and stressors, including pedagogical, emotional, and technological challenges. Depending on the support needed, teachers' requests are routed to appropriate domain experts -- staff employed by educational non-profit organizations who understand teachers' on-the-ground realities -- who offer localized and contextualized assistance. Via a three-month exploratory deployment with 28 teachers in India, we show how Saharaline's design enabled a collective of diverse education experts to craft and deliver localized solutions that teachers could incorporate into their practice. We conclude by reflecting on the efficacy of our intervention in low-resource work contexts and provide recommendations to enhance collective social support interventions similar to Saharaline.

Figures (4)

• Figure 1: Saharaline architecture showcasing key stakeholders: (1) teachers in low-resource schools who contacted Saharaline, (2) facilitators who oversaw coordination and managed the helpline; (3) caseworkers who interacted with teacher on behalf of Saharaline; (4) experts who provided the solutions.
• Figure 2: Breakdown of pathways providing collective social support through Saharaline; Support represents the conversion of stressor to solutions for each stage; Actors represent different stakeholders involved in each step; Data and medium showcase different mediums in which data is produced through interaction or knowledge production.
• Figure 3: Table showing an overview of different types of problems and associated social support provided to the teachers. PF = Problem-focused, EF = Emotion-focused support
• Figure 4: Message excerpts from helpline; (A) Automated greeting message when teacher reached out to Saharaline; (B) Caseworkers requesting teacher for additional context for her problems by asking her to share sample home work she shares with the students after school & teacher sharing materials in response; (C) An example of how caseworker localizes the expert solutions from the case file. The first snippet introduces the teacher to mindful meditation techniques and the second snippet shares important helpline numbers and introduces the notion of a "help friend"; (D) Curated summary for experts. Message consisted weekly highlights, teacher and caseworker's feedback; (E) A teacher sharing a video of her executing suggested solutions in the classroom by the expert.