Mixed Affect Among Educators During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Network Analysis

• In Event: Managing Emotions in Times of Uncertainty and Stress: Findings From a Free National Course for Educators 2020–2022

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic constitutes a global health crisis. Even with social distancing and “stay-at-home” policies, educators still need to educate the next generation, though their work experiences no longer resemble the known normal. Research has revealed that educators reported higher stress, anxiety, and depression during the COVID-19 outbreak than they did before (Jakubowski & Sitko-Dominik, 2021). However, most of these studies centered on educators’ mental health outcomes and left their emotional experiences at work underexamined. Moreover, given that most of these studies were conducted in the early period of COVID-19, little is known about how educators felt in later waves of the pandemic, particularly when schools reopened. Theoretical Foundation. This study employed a co-occurrence network analysis to examine the co-existing structure of both positive and negative affect experienced by educators at work in 2021(Moeller et al., 2018). Objective. Specifically, we explored (a) How often do educators report high ratings of negative affect only, high ratings of positive affect only, and high ratings of positive and negative affect together and (b) Which two highly rated affect often co-occur within educators? Method. In the pre-survey of the National Course for Educator on Qualtrics, 4,348 educators (Mage = 41.09; 84.04% female) rated the frequencies of 51 different affect they experienced at work using a 1–5 Likert scale (1 = none of the time; 5 = all of the time). These affect included positive basic affect (e.g., joyful, determined, and hopeful), negative basic affect (e.g., bored, tired, and worried), positive social affect (e.g., included, empathic, and grateful), and negative social affect (isolated, embarrassed, and disengaged). The co-occurrence of two affect occurred when both affect were highly rated by the same individual (i.e., above 2.5 on a 1–5 Likert scale; Moeller et al., 2018; Tang et al., 2022). The co-occurrence network analyses were performed with igraph package in R (Csardi & Nepusz, 2006). The advantages of the co-occurrence network analysis include the following: (1) It prevents common misinterpretations of correlation analysis (e.g., people often interpret a positive correlation between A and B as A is high when B is high; however, it is also possible that A and B are both low); (2) Co-occurrence can happen even when two affect are negatively correlated (e.g., joyful and worried can exist simultaneously within an individual). Results. In the co-occurrence network analysis, 51 affect ratings (nodes) formed 1,217 pairs of co-occurring affect (edges). Most educators (97.88%) reported at least one both positive and negative affect, and very few reported only positive (1.98%) or negative (.07%) affect. Figure 1 shows the graph of the complete network. Table 1 displays the top 10 frequent mixed-valence pairs of co-occurring positive and negative affect (e.g., 77% of all individuals endorsed high ratings of thankful and tired simultaneously). Significance. Our study provides the first evidence of the co-occurrence patterns of a large number of affect among educators during the COVID-19 pandemic, contributing to teacher education and affect science. Practical implications and potential interventions will be further discussed.

Authors

• Shengjie Lin, Yale University
  Presenting Author

• Zorana Ivcevic Pringle, Yale University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Christina Cipriano, Yale University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Chenglu Li, University of Utah
  Non-Presenting Author

• Miranda Wood, Yale University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marc A. Brackett, Yale University
  Non-Presenting Author