Abstract
In response to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, educational institutions around the world were forced into lockdown in order to contain the spread of the virus. To ensure continuous provision of education, most transitioned to emergency remote instruction. This has been particularly the case in higher education (HE) institutions. The circumstances of the pandemic have brought unprecedented psychological pressure on the population, in the case of educators and students exacerbated by the transition to a mode of instruction that was completely novel to the majority. The present study examines how college and university instructors dealt with teaching online in these unparalleled circumstances, with a focus on how factors connected with their daily lives and livelihoods influenced their well-being. Between April and September 2020, a comprehensive online survey was filled out by 804 HE instructors from 92 countries. We explore how sociodemographic variables such as gender, age, relationship status, living conditions, and length of professional experience non-trivially affect situational anxiety, work-life synergy, coping, and productivity. The results contribute to a better understanding of the impact of the pandemic and emergency remote instruction on college and university instructors’ well-being by explaining the mechanisms mediating the relationship between individual, contextual, and affective variables. It may provide helpful guidelines for college and university administrators as well as teachers themselves as to how help alleviate the adverse effects of the continuing pandemic and possible similar disruptions leading to school closures on coping and well-being.
Highlights
The circumstances of the pandemic have brought unprecedented psychological pressure on the population
In the following analysis we focus on the relative contribution of demographic variables as well as factors measured with four short scales (Supplementary Appendix 2) and three single-item indicators: Negative affect was measured with 11 items assessing to what extent instructors felt negative emotional states such as sadness (e.g., “I have been sad”), irritation (e.g., “I have been feeling irritable”), strain (e.g., “I feel building up pressure”), and emotional instability (e.g., “I have been having bouts of anxiety/panic attacks”) as well as symptoms of fatigue (e.g., “I feel tired during the day”)
The results indicate that in the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers differed in their wellbeing, which reflected their negative emotional states
Summary
The circumstances of the pandemic have brought unprecedented psychological pressure on the population. The adverse—sometimes long-lasting—psychological impact of the lockdown restrictions, stay-at-home orders, quarantine, and other repercussions span anxiety, post-traumatic stress symptoms, psychological distress, confusion, panic disorder, anger, depression, insomnia, and emotional exhaustion (Brooks et al, 2020; Qiu et al, 2020; Cénat et al, 2021a). As campuses almost all over the world successively shut down, in order to ensure the continuity of learning and of communication between teachers and students (Karalis, 2020), educators were thrust into the provision of alternative modes of delivery, or “emergency remote teaching” (Hodges et al, 2020; Reimers and Schleicher, 2020) that for most was an entirely novel form of work. The strong possibility of deteriorating mental health because of the sense of uncertainty and anxiety among students and faculty members was understandably envisaged already in the initial stages of the pandemic (Sahu, 2020)
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