Effectiveness of the Teacher Resilience Distance Support Programme in Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia

As society becomes more modern, the economic and social significance of teleworking is increasing. This trend has been particularly accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Teleworking, as distance education/learning, has also been applied in the education system. However, there are limitations to such work, one of which is the loss of communication between teachers and students. School educators are in need of emotional resources and resilience when working remotely. There is a lack of targeted distance support programmes for teachers. Aim of the study. To investigate the effectiveness of the Teacher Distance Resilience Support Programme. Study participants. 161 teachers from different schools in Lithuania, Latvia and Slovakia. Methodology. Feedback questionnaire for the Teacher Resilience Support Programme (Svence, 2022); supervision of the training programme and focus group. Results. Relatively high Cronbach alpha values for the questionnaire modules were established. It was found that teachers in the whole sample have a positive perception of the effectiveness of the distance support training programme. Statistically significant differences were found in evaluations of individual modules submitted by teachers from Lithuania, Latvia, and Slovakia. The age and experience of teachers did not show statistically significant difference. Conclusions. Teachers in all the three countries have positive perceptions of the effectiveness of the distance support programme based on the feedback questionnaire and the supervision and focus group. In order to strengthen the resilience of teachers who work distance, it is recommended that the remote support programme is applied in school communities and included in teacher training studies.publishersversionPeer reviewe

Teachers’ social and emotional health indicators in the distance learning situation during the Covid-19 pandemic

There were 3 countries which participated in Erasmus+ project „Supporting teachers to face the challenge of distance teaching” (2020-1-LV01-KA226-SCH-094599) during last year. The aim of the project was to develop a well-functioning digital support system for teachers, promoting socio-emotional health and resilience. The main aim of this research was to outline a research problem on teacher well-being factors in three countries during the Covid-19 pandemic, when teachers worked remotely, and to further explore the problem in a focus group in Latvia. The following is a description of the study that was carried out in Latvia on the problems of teachers' social and emotional health factors during distance learning in 2020-2021. The study in Latvia took place in parallel with the study in Slovakia and Lithuania. This article describes the first part of the study in Latvia. One of the tasks of the study was to identify the factors that predicted teachers’ social and emotional health (SEH-T), to determine the relationships between teacher SEH, emotional burnout and teacher engagement in work indicators, and to perform a linguistic and psychometric adaptation of the teacher SEH-T (Social-emotional Health Survey – Teachers, Furlong and Gajdosova, 2019). Latvian teachers from different schools in Latvia participated in this study. Respondents completed three surveys: Teachers SEH-T (Social- emotional Health Survey – Teachers, Furlong and Gajdosova, 2018), Engaged Teachers Scale (ETS; Klassen, Yerdelen & Durksen, 2013) and the K. Maslach Burnout Survey – General Survey (MBI– GS, Maslach, Jackson & Leiter, 1996; Caune, 2004). The results showed that the translation of teachers' SEH-T survey into Latvian language had good internal coherence of articles, the article discrimination index indicator was statically significant, and the reaction index was within the normal range. Teachers SEH is positively predicted by teacher engagement indicators. Demographic and emotional burnout rates do not predict teachers' SEH-T scores. The results showed that there were statistically significant positive correlations between teacher SEH-T, teacher engagement, and emotional burnout rates. There were statistically significant negative correlations between teachers' SEH-T indicators, teacher involvement and emotional burnout indicators. Keywords: Teachers SEH, work engagement, emotional burnoutpublishersversionPeer reviewe