Under pressure and overlooked: the impact of COVID-19 on teachers in NSW public schools

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has put unprecedented pressure on teachers around the world, raising significant concerns about their workload and wellbeing. Our comparison of 2019 (pre-pandemic) and 2020 (first year of the pandemic) survey data (n = 362) from teachers in New South Wales, Australia, demonstrates that their morale and efficacy declined significantly during COVID-19, even with the relatively short period of school closure (8 weeks) during 2020. Interviews with teachers and school leaders (n = 18) reinforced these findings and highlighted the depth to which teachers felt dispensable and unappreciated, despite working incredibly hard for their students. The pressure to adapt to online teaching and learning, in trying circumstances, also challenged their confidence in their teaching. We argue that practical and emotional support for teachers both during periods of remote learning and upon students’ return to the classroom is essential to support teacher’s wellbeing and a robust teaching workforce into the future.

“I miss seeing the kids!”: Australian teachers’ changing roles, preferences, and positive and negative experiences of remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Interestingly, in the Australian state of New South Wales, Gore and colleagues' (2021) recent analyses of Year 3-4 mathematics and reading data across 113 schools showed no systematic decline in 2020 performance relative to 2019. However, consistent with Grattan Institute projections, Year 3 students from schools with low socioeconomic advantage showed two months less growth in 2020 than equivalent schools (Gore et al, 2021). Moreover, students themselves reported concerns about motivation, teacher support, and loneliness when learning from home, with 62.6% of adolescents believing the pandemic had negatively impacted their education (Li et al, 2021).…”

“…There is international evidence, for example, that teachers have experienced high levels of stress and exhaustion (e.g. Fray et al, 2022;MacIntyre et al 2020;Silva et al, 2021). When viewed through the lens of the Job Demands-Resources model, these findings suggest that the specific "job demands" of teaching during COVID-19 often exceeded the structural and personal resources that teachers had available to manage those demands (Demerouti et al, 2001;Llorens et al, 2006).…”

“…Taken together, emerging evidence focusing on the impacts of school closures due to COVID-19 suggests significant stressors for teachers and learning risks for students. Notably, these come at a time when existing pre-COVID challenges to Australian teachers are already well documented, including significant workload challenges and administration demands, declining perceptions of autonomy, and high rates of stress (see Fray et al, 2022;Heffernan et al, 2019;Mackenzie, 2007). Drawing on the Job Demands-Resources model, therefore, there is emerging evidence of increasing pressure at a time when demands are already high.…”

Schooling upheaval during COVID-19: troubling consequences for students’ return to school

“…Given the concerns about school closures for student (Singh et al, 2020) and teacher well-being (Fray et al, 2022;Gore et al, 2020;Ziebell et al, 2020), as well as economic productivity (Joseph & Fahey, 2020), it is unsurprising that a widespread consensus emerged in favour of keeping lockdowns as short as possible. However, the reopening of schools, often framed as a return to normalcy and a time for helping students 'catch up' academically (Sonnemann & Goss, 2020), was far from normal.…”

“…In fact, when the first wave of the pandemic struck, we were in the middle of conducting a mixed methods randomised controlled trial (RCT) examining the effects of Quality Teaching Rounds professional development on student achievement and the quality of teaching, which had to be postponed (see Taggart et al, under review for an account on the consequences of this decision). Rather than waste the baseline data collected in early 2020 (prior to the pandemic), teachers and school leaders in participating schools (n = 51) were invited to take part in an alternative project examining the effects of COVID-19 on student achievement , teacher morale and efficacy (Fray et al, 2022), and student well-being.…”