Our qualitative study examined educators’ perceptions of teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of burnout theory. Using the three components of burnout as theorized by Maslach and Leiter (2016), we analyzed teachers’ self-reports of emotional exhaustion, cynicism/depersonalization, and reduced sense of professional self-efficacy. We interviewed 16 teachers who taught through the emergency remote-learning phase of the pandemic in March 2020 and remained in the same district when prepandemic practices returned. We conducted semistructured interviews in person and on Zoom with special educators, integrated arts teachers, school counselors, and general classroom teachers. We describe the unanticipated finding that teachers experienced an increase in perceived professional efficacy, which they attributed to certain pandemic-imposed structures and work conditions. We offer potential implications for teacher education, strengthening teacher resilience, and future research.
Farber et al. (Tue,) studied this question.