Secondary school teachers' emotional and occupational well-being amidst school closures during the national lockdown period

Abstract

The school closures during the national lockdown affected teachers' emotional and occupational well-being. The sudden transition from in-person to online teaching placed high expectations on teachers to deliver quality education, which profoundly affected their well-being. Teachers’ well-being is an important contributing factor to quality education; it was, therefore, important to ascertain the challenges secondary school teachers experienced and how they coped amidst the school closures. A qualitative methodological approach was adopted, using an exploratory case study design to conduct this study of limited scope. In addition, purposive sampling was used to select ten secondary school teachers, five each from a public and private school in Gauteng, South Africa. The Teachers’ well-being Conceptual framework gave prominence that well-being is a multi-dimensional concept that should be nurtured and provides a theoretically informed perspective of aspects of well-being. The findings shed light on the mental, physical and social well-being challenges that affected the ten secondary school teachers, the challenges they experienced transitioning to online teaching and the intrinsic and extrinsic coping strategies they used, such as social media and faith, to cope. The study illustrated the impetus for School Governing bodies to prioritise implementing coping strategies to provide support to address teachers’ well-being. This research contributes to the dearth of literature on teachers' well-being during school closures in Gauteng, South Africa. It is recommended that further research is conducted to address teachers' emotional and occupational well-being and identify the support needed to assist teachers in their professional development.