Coping with the challenges of working during COVID-19 pandemic in the experiences of primary school teachers

Abstract

The aim of the article is to reconstruct and interpret how teachers coped with new challenges in their work during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research focuses on the social experience of teachers’ work in this crisis period. The text presents a thematic analysis of the material from qualitative interviews focused on the most important aspects of teachers’ experience at work following the introduction of remote work in education on a large scale. The analysis of the research material (three focus interviews and six autobiographical narrative interviews) runs concurrently with the presentation of the topics emerging from the review of literature relevant to the subject. The thematic analysis focuses on how teachers coped during the pandemic and the experience of crises in their professional and personal life. In the conclusion, we name and pre-categorize teachers’ strategies for coping with the challenges of teaching during the pandemic following the introduction of remote work in an emergency mode without institutional preparation. The results presented in the article are part of the research conducted under the currently implemented research project COV-WORK.