COVID-19 Stress and Teachers Well-Being: The Mediating Role of Sense of Coherence and Resilience

Abstract

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted many professions with short-, medium-, and long-term consequences. Hence, this study examined the mediating role of sense of coherence (SOC) and resilience in the relation to COVID-19 stress and teachers’ well-being (TWB). It recruited 836 teachers from Ethiopia’s higher-education institutions, of which 630 (75.4%) were men and 206 (24.6%) were women, with a mean age of 32.81 years and a standard deviation of 6.42. Findings showed that COVID-19 stress negatively predicted SOC, resilience, and TWB and that SOC and resilience positively predicted TWB. It was concluded that SOC and resilience, both together and separately, mediated the relation between COVID-19 stress and TWB. These results were discussed alongside relevant literature, and the study is found to be valuable for practitioners and researchers who seek to improve well-being using SOC and resilience as resources across teaching professions.

Rising Strong: The Interplay between Resilience, Social Support, and Post-Traumatic Growth among Teachers after the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…A recent study reinforces our finding, highlighting the significance of psychological resilience as a predictor of post-traumatic growth when individuals are engaged in disaster preparedness and hence perceive themselves as being more able to cope and experience growth after stressful traumas [44]. Additionally, our study confirms findings from a recent study that emphasized the critical role of social support in shaping teachers' well-being and post-traumatic growth [18]. Resilience and social support in the current study may have helped teachers face the challenges in their work and personal lives and consequently may have reduced their emotional distress.…”

“…Resilience is a psychological resource that refers to positive adaptation and functioning in the face of a crisis [15,16]. Studies conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic found that teachers' resilience was positively related to their emotional state and functioning [11,17], and that resilience is a significant positive predictor of teacher well-being [18].…”

A Systematic Review on Teachers’ Well-Being in the COVID-19 Era

“…Positive TWB levers were often determined based on teachers' effective use of their personal resources and personality traits to overcome stress and augment their well-being as fully functioning professionals when working within a school environment in constant flux and turbulence. Empirical testimony to such positive TWB correlates in the COVID-19 period illustrate the invaluable role of teachers' resilience and utilization of coping strategies, maintaining a clear and organized work schedule and the generation of feelings of professional mastery [128]; teachers' perceived need to (a) adopt proactive physical TWB self-care strategies (e.g., yoga, meditation classes) and (b) regain their professional selfesteem by being recognized for the services they provide in public education in the middle of the pandemic [98]; teacher confidence as manifest in their ability to manage student behaviors [138]; obsessive work passion found to be associated with considerable gains in work engagement, work performance, and affective well-being by eliminating negative emotions and guilt sentiments for any faults and inadequacies and by moderating the effects of excessive workload and organizational constraints [139]; increased levels of intrinsic motivation and positive attitudes toward the teaching profession that impelled teachers to persist in teaching despite the ERT-associated hardships [130]; personal resource readiness to innovate and high levels of self-efficacy with digital media found to be associated with perceived changes in TWB, elevated levels of job satisfaction, and minimum exhaustion for teachers [108]; a perceived sense of coherence at work and resiliency that positively predicted TWB acting as mediators between COVID-19 stress and TWB and as valuable personal resources that enable teachers to flourish in life and nurture their well-being in times of crisis [140]; and the use of positive coping 'problem-focused' (e.g., planning for the future, developing new technological skills) and 'emotion-focused' strategies (e.g., personal skills and capacities, connecting with colleagues, family and friends) [131], which were found to be associated with enhanced TWB, particularly when combined with sound a psychological state and work characteristics [141]. Indeed, in a study by [134], the use of effective coping strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic further revealed that language teachers who tended to opt for active, approach-oriented coping strategies, first by accepting the situation and then by attempting to deal with it using planning, immediate action, and reframing, as well as seeking emotional support, were all predictive of high levels of TWB and health, positive emotions (happiness and growth during trauma), and resilience.…”

“…The instrumentation utilized for TWB measurement in these studies consisted of (a) the adaptation of widely established and standardized psychometric scales of wellbeing and mental health such as the International Barometer of Education Personnel's Health and Wellbeing [142], the World Health Organization Well-being Index [115,134], Ryff's Psychological Well-Being Scales [101,102], the PERMA Profiler Questionnaire [99,140], Diener et al's (2009) Psychological Wellbeing Scale [103,139], the modified BBC Subjective Well-being scale (BBC-SWB) [118], and Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) [126] and (b) the compilation of context-specific well-being instruments, valid for experimentation within a particular educational context. Instances of such scales are Alves et al's [105] Well-being and Health Perception Scale and Perception Scale of Well-Being with the Professional Situation in Times of Pandemic, Eadie's [98] Early Childhood Professional Wellbeing scale, Smith and James' [141] Wellbeing Process Questionnaire, and Trindade et al's [106] Questionnaire of the Perception of Well-Being at Work, (c) the use and appropriation of instruments used in prior TWB research in view of COVID-19 new reality, e.g., [112,115,117,145], (d) the development of new survey COVID-19-oriented questionnaires in relation to TWB [107,116,143], and (e) the use of scales that measure TWB indirectly as a function of work-related anxiety [121], depression, general and specific life satisfaction [124,127], teacher stress and exhaustion [100,108], job satisfaction [109,137,138], teacher burnout [137], teacher work engagement, and emotional exhaustion [110,…”

“…The results identified a wide variety of individual and contextual correlates of TWB as being responsible for self-perceived negative well-being rates in the pandemic era associated with: (i) role ambiguity at the school level and low resilience and unwillingness for personal engagement due to high workload and increased professional challenges [128,133]; intense feelings of disconnectedness and isolation and a sense of professional uselessness ( [129,130]), and teaching incompetence experienced by teachers when called to tackle with ERT demands in both technological and pedagogical terms [131] and (ii) work-related factors related to the risk of reduced income revenue or the prospect of job loss in the private sector [136]; the double burden of work-family care [134,135]; additional administrative and ERT teaching overload [132]; and a lack of common strategy and planning for schools, absence of collegial collaboration [114], appreciation, and support by school administration, insufficient school resources and unequal access to them, and the unavailability of opportunities for further professional development in the midst of COVID-19 [128]. The key TWB positive facilitators were (i) teachers' personality characteristics and self-esteem as fully qualified professionals [99] capable of surviving the adversities posed by the COVID-19 virus in their everyday school routine by exhibiting obsessive work passion [140], increased teacher self-confidence [139], readiness to innovate within the novel ERT paradigm [109], intrinsic work motivation [130], maintaining a well-organized work schedule [128], and using effective coping and proactive physical self-care TWB strategies [134,142,146]. Aspects of school organization identified as being conducive to TWB in-crisis maintenance and enhancement were: the provision of support and encouragement for creative teaching self-efficacy with training in ERT practices [147]; the appropriate allocation of teacher workload [116]; a high sense of job satisfaction and work-related coherence and autonomy at work boosted by empowering leadership [148]; the promotion of high-quality relationships and collaboration with all stakeholders at school community level [135]; and the implementation of TWB in-service COVID-19 interventio...…”