Teachers’ Gendered Experiences of COVID-19 Pandemic Effects: Making the Case for Focusing on Teacher Well-being in Programmatic Adaptations to Crises

• In Event: Compounding Crises: Impact of COVID-19 on Teachers and Teaching in Conflict-Affected Settings Part II

Proposal

With the COVID-19 pandemic highlighting, once again, the crucial role of teachers in maintaining learning continuity, building a comprehensive understanding of teachers’ experiences and well-being during the health crisis can help inform ongoing crisis response and build equitable education development strategies. From the onset of the health crises, education systems and education development programs were expected to provide alternative solutions amidst rapidly changing contexts in an unfamiliar and unpredictable environment. Schools shifted to distance learning modalities, and teachers were immediately tasked with implementing these modalities, often without adequate training or resources.

Current health policy research recognizes that “gendered dimensions” of pandemics play an important role in understanding communities’ needs when designing interventions, as both biological and social normative factors shape the ability of both women and men to survive and recover from the pandemic’s effects (Oertelt-Prigione, 2020; The Lancet, 2020). The gendered effects of COVID-19 pandemic are not only manifested in the mortality rates of women and men but also in their mental well-being, physical safety, and economic resilience ("The Sex, Gender and COVID-19 Project | Global Health 50/50", 2022).

This paper focuses on teachers’ gendered experiences during school closures in four countries—Honduras, Liberia, Mali, and Zambia—and supposes how their experiences might inform current discourse on teacher well-being. It uses the findings from the secondary analysis of survey data from a multi-project panel study to discuss teachers’ gendered experiences within the socio-ecological framework of teacher well-being in low-resource, crisis- and conflict-affected contexts as outlined by the Education Equity Research Initiative (EERI). Recognizing teacher well-being as multidimensional and context-specific, the paper probes programmatic adaptations of educational projects to reflect on the assumptions about practice and policy and examines how responses to these emergencies can address the needs of all beneficiaries.

References
Oertelt-Prigione, S. (2020). The impact of sex and gender in the COVID-19 pandemic : case study, European Commission, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, Publications Office. https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2777/17055

The Lancet. (2020). The gendered dimensions of COVID-19. The Lancet, 395(10231), 1168. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(20)30823-0
The Sex, Gender and COVID-19 Project | Global Health 50/50. Globalhealth5050.org. (2022) https://globalhealth5050.org/the-sex-gender-and-covid-19-project/.

Falk, D., Finder Johna, E., & Frisoli, P. (2019). Landscape Review: Teacher Well-being in Low Resource, Crisis, and Conflict-affected Settings. Washington, DC: Education Equity Research Initiative.

Authors

• Jasmina Josic, EDC

• Mary F Sugrue, Education Development Center