Wesley Barnett
Published: 2023
Total Pages: 0
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As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, educators have experienced several drastic changes to teaching including the introduction of distance, virtual, hybrid, and in-person learning. During these stages of education, teachers experienced dramatic new occupational responsibilities which produced unintended consequences for many educators throughout the country. Now that the Covid-19 pandemic has officially ended, the researcher designed this study to understand the impact these occupational changes have had on educators' occupational stress levels, views toward school climate, and overall level of burnout. The scope of this research study was centered around teachers' own perspectives toward occupational requirements, their stress levels, their own views on school climate, and teacher burnout levels pre-and post-pandemic. To accumulate data in an effective and systematic approach, the researcher designed an explanatory, sequential, mixed-method study where data was obtained from the teaching faculty at a middle school in southern California. Quantitative data was obtained through a survey and qualitative data was gathered through semi-structured interviews. The data revealed that the Covid-19 pandemic significantly increased the occupational responsibilities of teachers. Further, the data shows that the occupational stress levels of educators greatly increased, the views toward school climate greatly decreased and the overall levels of burnout significantly increased. This data can be considered valid as the researcher avoided influencing participants' responses and analyzed the data in a uniform and systematic approach. The study concluded that teachers would benefit from more well-established occupational responsibilities and requirements. This would lead to less occupational stress levels for teachers, which would improve burnout levels. Further, this researcher identifies a need to research ways to better support the emotional, social, and mental health of teachers and students post pandemic. This could improve school climate and hopefully lower teacher burnout levels. Without any action, the United States can be entering a very concerning period in education.