The Influence of COVID-19 Crisis on Teachers’ Attrition in Israel 2021

Abstract

AbstractOn March 2020, when the World Health Organization has announced COVID-19 an official pandemic and global health crisis, most schools around the world were closed, and education systems were forced to move to online learning. This article’s goal is to examine whether the COVID-19 crisis may exacerbate teacher’s attrition phenomenon in Israel. The COVID-19 crisis has forced teachers to move from traditional teaching to online teaching, without any preliminary preparation. This article is based on a qualitative pilot research conducted in Israel (August 2021), which included questionnaires for teachers using social network groups. 50 teachers from elementary and junior high school have participated the sample.The findings indicate that the COVID-19 crisis brought new challenges for teachers alongside new opportunities for professional growth. Teachers prefer the tradition “face to face” teaching, and distance teaching increased both their stress and professional load. The research findings do not indicate extreme changes in attrition rate due to this crisis, but this article suggests that the education systems in Israel should take this opportunity and raise the teacher’s status in Israel, a factor that will lead to reduce teacher’s attrition in the future. Finally, since COVID-19 is still here and continues threatening teaching staff work routine, teacher’s attrition data should be observed and monitored in the next years in the course and after this crisis in order to receive better understanding of its influences.KeywordsCOVID-19Teachers’ attritionOnline learningDistance learning