EFL Teachers' Coping Strategies amidst the Covid-۱۹ Virtual Education and their Association with Work Engagement and Teacher Apprehension

Teaching can be considered as an extremely demanding and stressful occupation and being a language educator brings about its distinctive challenges. In the wake of the COVID-۱۹ pandemic, teachers worldwide experienced fundamental changes in their profession and their lives as a whole. Coping with such an unprecedented situation and responses to it have created new and extra stressful factors for teachers to cope with, including the difficulties created by the quick transition from direct teaching to virtual and remote teaching. This study examined EFL teachers’ coping strategies during the Covid-۱۹ virtual education and their association with work engagement and teacher apprehension. A total of ۲۹۶ language instructors contributed to this study by participating in a survey in January ۲۰۲۱. To determine what coping strategies teachers use in virtual teaching during Covid-۱۹, the researchers adopted the Brief-COPE scale designed and validated by Carver (۱۹۹۷) to make it appropriate for virtual education. The survey measured ۱۱ coping strategies divided into two broad types, approach and avoidant. For measuring work engagement, the Work and Well-being Survey (UWES) scale designed and validated by Schaufeli and Bakker (۲۰۰۳) was utilized. To assess teachers’ apprehension, the research employed the Sources of Teachers’ Apprehension Scale (STAS) developed by Ghanizadeh et al. (۲۰۲۰). The results demonstrated that the adopted coping strategies scale enjoys acceptable reliability and validity indices. The results estimated via structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed that EFL teachers’ approach to coping strategies positively and significantly predicted work engagement (β=۰.۷۲, t= ۱۰.۵۶). Work engagement was negatively predicted by avoidant coping strategies (β= -۰.۲۹, t= -۳.۳۶). Teacher apprehension was negatively influenced by approach coping strategies (β= -۰.۴۴, t= -۵.۵۷) and positively by avoidant coping strategies (β=۰.۴۳, t= ۵.۲۹). The study proposes some practical recommendations for overcoming the Covid-۱۹ related challenges which could further deliver valuable guidance for future training of teachers.Keywords: Apprehension; Coping Strategies

کلیدواژه ها:

Apprehension ، Coping Strategies ، Covid-۱۹ ، Online Teaching ، Work Engagement ، SEM ، CFA ، Scale Development