Teaching away from school: do school digital support influence teachers’ well-being during Covid-19 emergency?

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic coerced the closure of most schools around the world and forced teachers and students to change teaching and learning methods. Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) generated consequences to teachers and students in terms of learning outcomes and personal well-being. This study focuses on teachers’ individual and working environment well-being in ERT conditions and intends to explore which factors related to the provision of digital equipment and the implementation of digital strategies by schools explain the school effect on both typologies of well-being during the Covid-19 emergency. To do so, data collected in the Responses to Educational Disruption Survey (REDS) across three countries were used, and a two-step analysis was conducted. A first step involves the use of linear mixed effect models to assess the school effect on teachers individual and working environment well-being. In the second step Regression Trees (RT) are used to investigate which factors and policies related to digital tools explained the identified school effects. The results show that schools and countries played a role in determining teachers perceived well-being during the Covid-19 disruption, in particular the school level explains more than 7% of the work environment well-being and 8% of individual one. In the second step of the analysis results show that a high positive effect on school environment well-being is observed when the school’s activity is not influenced by policies limiting the use of online tools and when teacher’s readiness for remote teaching, like the development of technical skills and the provision of internet access and digital devices, is met. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that evaluates the impact of digital tactics and instruments provided by schools on teachers’ well-being on a large scale.