Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative influence on the South African basic
education sector. This study examines educators' personal experience during the
pandemic and highlights how the COVID-19 outbreak drove educators to adjust to
several pandemic-related challenges. The study's objective was to discover
how resources and support systems made available to teachers in the classroom
affected their day-to-day encounters. The study examined how educators felt they
were supported during the COVID-19 pandemic, how resilience and risk factors
affected both contact and online classroom instruction, and the type of support
teachers felt they required. This study made use of elements from the theory of school
effectiveness that was adapted to understand teacher effectiveness and to determine
how to best support teachers during the pandemic. The study also includes the social
ecology of resilience as a theoretical framework to examine the risk and protective
factors that teachers encountered during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Thus, the findings of this qualitative study revealed teachers' accounts of the
psychological adversity and stress they encountered throughout the COVID-19
pandemic. A phenomenological research design and an interpretivist paradigm were
utilised in the study. The study included eight teachers as participants. Questionnaires
and individual interviews were used to collect data from the eight teachers who
participated in the study. The information gathered was then coded and examined.
The review into how the outbreak affected educators and identifies common themes
of their respective opinions. According to the research findings, teachers highlighted
five protective factors, that supported them during the COVID-19 outbreak. The
Provision of psychological intervention to learners and educators; empathetic school
management teams; provision of technical training and resources; effective planning
and curriculum management; and proper administration of the COVID-19 standard
operating procedures were identified as the top five protective factors by educators
who participated in the study.