Teachers’ Social-Emotional Health and Resilience in Covid-19 Crisis: Latvian Sample

Abstract

Research on social-emotional health and resilience of Latvian teachers was conducted as part of the ERASMUS+ project “Supporting teachers to face the challenge of distance teaching”. The aim of this study is to assess teachers’ social-emotional health and resilience to reveal those areas which require significant support and development in the Covid-19 pandemic situation. In the article, the concepts used in the project – social-emotional health, resilience, covitality will be theoretically analysed to substantiate the structure of the empirical study. Teachers’ mental health was tested using Social-emotional Health Survey– Teachers SEHS-T (Furlong et al., 2017; Furlong et al., 2014; Furlong & Gajdošová, 2018, as mentioned in Lapiņa, 2021) and Resilience Scale RS 25 (Wagnild & Young, 1993; Wagnild, 2009; Wagnild, 2016) with supplementary questions. 636 teachers of general and vocational schools took part in the research. The results identified that positive teachers’ strengths are self-regulation, empathy, and cognitive reappraisal. However, the teachers demonstrated limits in resilience as such, and in some scores of SEHS-T, as in covitality domain Belief in Others, especially in institutional and colleagues’ support, and in Engaged Living – gratitude and zest. The identified weaknesses and limits will be used as a foundation for preparing further intervention activities – a digital psychological support programme for strengthening the teachers’ resilience and mental health in general.