Implications of COVID on Education

Implications of COVID on Education

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Implications of COVID on Education

COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the disruption of many aspects of life. There is no doubt that every aspect of education was affected by the pandemic. To respond to the increasing cases of infections, schools were closed, and teachers all over the country responded to this disruption by developing materials for synchronous and asynchronous classes (Jones & Kessler, 2020). Even though teachers were able to adapt to new modalities, research has shown that the COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on their commitment to the profession.

According to a study conducted by Zamarro et al. (2022) comparing teacher commitment in the years 2020 and 2021, it was noted that there were considerable differences between the level of commitment of teachers between the two years. In 2020, 74.2% of the educators involved in the study indicated that they were planning to commit to the profession until retirement. However, this percentage of educators planning to remain in the profession until retirement decreased to 69% in 2021. Another major finding from the study was that the percentage of teachers anticipating to leave the profession in the next five years increased from 24% to 30%. The results of the study confirm the claim made by Jakubowski & Sitko-Dominik (2021) that teaching is a high-stress profession, and the COVID-19 pandemic seems to have aggravated this level of stress and burnout. Furthermore, research by Gutentag & Asterhan (2022) supports this by indicating that teachers experienced more burnout, which is associated with lower commitment and higher turnover intentions, during the pandemic when compared to prior years

Factors Affecting Teacher Retention during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Before the pandemic started, approximately 8% of teachers were leaving their profession (Pressley, 2021). However, during the early fall of 2020, the attrition rate of teachers had increased in several districts. Approximately a third of the school leaders indicated that the attrition rate of teachers was higher than normal, while the rest indicated that the rates were normal (Diliberti et al., 2021). This rate seemed to increase as the year progressed, as demonstrated by a national survey conducted by Diliberti & Kaufman (2020). The survey results indicated that towards the end of 2020, the percentage of teachers who reported a higher likelihood of leaving the profession in the 2020-2021 academic year was about one-quarter, with the majority of these teachers citing burnout as the reason. Additionally, these teachers indicated that they had not considered leaving the profession before the pandemic. This suggests that there is a need to understand the underlying factors that contributed to this burnout.

The return to the classroom for the 2020-2021 academic year involved both remote and in-person schooling. The teachers returned to different classroom surroundings and routines and adopted new instructional strategies. Additionally, they had to learn new technological approaches, create a culture without interacting with students and fulfil other district and school requirements (Pressley, 2021). For in-person classes, the teachers and school leaders had to adjust schedules, implement measures to combat the spread of the virus and take additional measures for themselves and their families. These demands contributed to the already full workloads of the teachers which existed before the COVID-19 pandemic, and this made them experience more burnout. According to Sarikaya (2021), variables such as unusual or excess workload, professional interaction concerns and concerns impacting family life seem to contribute to burnout and anxiety due to COVID-19. The author further suggests that new information and technologies for communication, social support, work-family related conflict, workload, and new requirements established in subjects triggered burnout among teachers. This claim is consistent with the findings of a survey done by Diliberti et al. (2021), which suggested that four out of ten teachers who left the profession before and during the pandemic cited stress and disappointments as the major reason for their decisions.

Technical issues and insufficient technical and administrative support were other reasons that contributed to a higher turnover of teachers during the pandemic (Steiner & Woo, 2021). According to the study conducted by the authors, the likely pandemic leavers cited frequent technical issues as a common problem when providing remote instruction. Additionally, the likely leavers had challenges with attaining the equipment they required to teach remotely, while those who had already left during the pandemic reported having the same problems before leaving the profession. The technical issues experienced were due to the insufficient training that was offered to the likely leavers and those who had already left. These findings are consistent with those of Diliberti et al. (2021), who found that teachers did not get enough training on providing remote instructions, and approximately half of the pandemic teacher leavers were in schools that used instructional strategies that did not match their choices during the teachers.

The survey conducted by Diliberti et al. (2021) indicated that nearly one out of five teachers who left the profession during the COVID-19 pandemic cited pay that is not worth the risks and stress experienced during the pandemic as their reason. This is consistent with the results of the study conducted by Räsänen et al. (2020), which suggests that teachers consider leaving the profession when work requirements are increased while appreciation and salary levels remain low.

Solving the Increasing Turnover Rate

Although the review focuses on the turnover during the pandemic, it is evident that retention issues predate the 2020-2021 academic year. Therefore, these challenges are most likely to be experienced even after the pandemic. Different scholars provide various recommendations to enhance teacher retention efforts. (Steiner & Woo, 2021) suggest that data on teachers’ working conditions and job-related stressors needs to be gathered. This can help identify the varying conditions that can spur teachers to leave the profession, and the necessary measures can be induced to maintain them in their jobs. Furthermore, mental health support for teachers and school leaders needs to be established to reduce teacher stress and offer mental health support. This can be crucial since existing research suggests that there is an association between job-related stress, burnout and mental health.

Additionally, district leaders need to work with teachers collaboratively when developing policies related to remote teaching and develop technology standards for equipment to be used in remote teaching. Such policies may include clear definitions of the circumstances in which educators are anticipated to use the remote approach to teaching. Policies may also entail providing additional staffing support to teachers through monitoring and supporting remote learning and addressing other needs of the students (Steiner & Woo, 2021).

Another major recommendation by Diliberti et al. (2021) is that districts need to consider strategies to enhance the flexibility of schedules during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the strategies that can be considered include remote schooling for teachers willing to use this strategy, job sharing, differentiating roles and changes in credentialing, for instance, micro-credentials that offer teachers a way to specialize, narrowing their responsibilities.

References

Diliberti, M., & Kaufman, J. H. (2020). Will This School Year Be Another Casualty of the Pandemic? Key Findings from the American Educator Panels Fall 2020 COVID-19 Surveys. Data Note: Insights from the American Educator Panels. Research Report. RR-A168-4. RAND Corporation.

Diliberti, M., Schwartz, H. L., & Grant, D. M. (2021). Stress topped the reasons why public school teachers quit, even before COVID-19. RAND.

Gutentag, T., & Asterhan, C. S. (2022). Burned-Out: Middle School Teachers After One Year of Online Remote Teaching During COVID-19. Frontiers in Psychology, 783.

Jakubowski, T. D., & Sitko-Dominik, M. M. (2021). Teachers’ mental health during the first two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland. PloS one, 16(9), e0257252.

Jones, A. L., & Kessler, M. A. (2020). Teachers’ emotion and identity work during a pandemic. In Frontiers in Education (Vol. 5, p. 583775). Frontiers Media SA.

Pressley, T. (2021). Factors contributing to teacher burnout during COVID-19. Educational Researcher, 50(5), 325-327.

Pressley, T. (2021). Factors contributing to teacher burnout during COVID-19. Educational Researcher, 50(5), 325-327.

Räsänen, K., Pietarinen, J., Pyhältö, K., Soini, T., & Väisänen, P. (2020). Why leave the teaching profession? A longitudinal approach to the prevalence and persistence of teacher turnover intentions. Social Psychology of Education, 23(4), 837-859.

Sarikaya, M. (2021). An investigation of the relationship between COVID-19 anxiety and burnout among music teachers. International Journal on Social and Education Sciences (IJonSES), 3(4), 789-806.

Steiner, E. D., & Woo, A. (2021). Job-Related Stress Threatens the Teacher Supply: Key Finding from the 2021 State of the US Teacher Survey. Technical Appendixes. Research Report. RR-A1108-1. Rand Corporation.

Zamarro, G., Camp, A., Fuchsman, D., & McGee, J. B. (2022). Understanding how COVID-19 has Changed Teachers’ Chances of Remaining in the Classroom. Sinquefield Center for Applied Economic Research Working Paper No. Forthcoming.