COPING STRATEGIES PREFERRED BY RUSSIAN SCHOOL TEACHERS IN ONLINE LEARNING

The study of Coping strategies preferred by Russian school teachers in online learning during the first half of the pandemic 2020 is based on the responses of 554 teachers participating in the all-Russian anonymous survey. The transition to online learning is qualified as a complex stressor of integrated nature that includes technological and human factors. The survey identified six groups of frustration factors in online learning: decreased motivation and academic performance of school students (decreased learning efficiency), communication difficulties between a teacher and a student / parent (communicative frustration), digital illiteracy, lack of equipment for online education and technical failures, increased volume and time of work as well as health and private life problems. The survey also revealed five types of coping strategies used by educators to overcome these frustration factors: time management and building boundaries, mastering online competencies and platforms (mastering new technologies and forms of activities), fixating on frustration and negative experiences associated with it, application of anti-stress practices, seeking for social support and understanding (empathy as a means of stress release). The study shows statistically significant dependence of the chosen coping strategy on the subjective significance of certain aspects of professional and pedagogical activities, describes adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies to deal with the stressor of online learning transition; highlights the main difficulties in the transition to online learning, presents teachers’ evaluation of the difficulties set before them by the transition to online learning and of their professional burnout.

teachers, pandemic, transition to online learning, stressor, coping strategies, frustration factors of online learning