Teachers’ work during the COVID-19 pandemic: Shifts, challenges and opportunities

Abstract

Reports of teachers’ work intensification have become common over the last decade, so it seems important to ask: how are teachers coping with the additional demands and changes brought by COVID-19? In this paper, we present initial data from a large, system-wide survey of teachers in NSW public schools, undertaken during the first phase of the pandemic in Australia, in order to document the nature of these shifts. These data provide teachers’ voice on some of the challenges, and difficulties they face in relation to professional work during the pandemic; and also the opportunities they have identified within the flux of change that has occurred in 2020. This study considers: 1. teaching in ‘COVID-wary classrooms’; and 2. teaching via remote learning.

Heavy demands for up-skilling, particularly for the second of these shifts, teaching via remote learning, and the development and implementation of new public health understanding within schools, have created new and additional challenges for the teaching profession.