Academic CentreSocial-emotional health and resilience of teachers in the East European countries Latvia, Lithuania and Slovak Republic in a distance learning situation
Gajdošová, E., Petrulyté, A., Svence.G
In professional life, teachers are exposed to many challenging work and environmental factors. The educational reforms, need for intensive learning of new technologies, but especially the Covid19 crisis and the associated distance learning process are leading to increased psycho-emotional overload, which has the potential to lead to a deterioration in teachers' mental health and quality of life.
In this context, the aim of the project research was to assess the socio-emotional health and resilience of primary, secondary and vocational school teachers in the post-pandemic period in order to identify areas where teachers need psychological support.
Social-emotional health survey-teachers (SEHS-T) (Furlong & Gajdošová, 2018) and Resilience Scale (RS 14) (Wagnild & Young, 1993, 2016), were used to obtain data. 1200 teachers, 400 from each participating country (Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia), took part in the research.
Teachers reported in all high level of social-emotional health overall indicator - Covitality, as well as enough high level in four of its domains: Belief in Self, Belief in Others, Emotional Competence, Engaged Living. Level of teachers´ resilience has reached a moderate level in all three participating countries. There were found high significant positive correlations between teachers´ resilience and overall covitality, as well as between resilience and covitality domains Engaged living, Emotional Competence and Belief in Self.
Positive teacher strengths that were identified are self-regulation, empathy, cognitive reappraisal. Teachers demonstrated limits in resilience as a whole, in Belief in Others, especially in institutional and colleagues support, and in Engaged Living subscales - gratitude, zest and optimism.
Identified weaknesses and limits will be used as a foundation for preparation of intervention activities for the teachers in the second project phase in 2022. These activities will target strengthening and support of mental health and resilience of teachers in participating East European countries.
More:
Research report: link
Conference presentation: saite
Eva’s Gajdosova’s video: saite