Online Teaching Barriers, Motivations, and Stress of In-Service Teachers: Renewed Challenges and Opportunities with Future Perspectives

Abstract

COVID-19 has caused drastic changes to almost all aspects of daily life, with education being the center of these changes and concerns. In particular, teaching approaches have been rapidly reoriented to online versions. Although there is a growing body of literature exploring the views of education during this crisis, a critical need exists to document challenges confronting educators in online teaching. In this paper, we explore the online teaching barriers and motivations of 55 in-service teachers in the Philippines, and how these variables contributed to their perceptions of stress regarding online teaching immediately after the pandemic started. Results demonstrated that respondents’ perceptions of interest in online teaching significantly reduced their perceptions of stress regarding online teaching. However, barriers to online teaching, online communication self-efficacy, and the utility value of online teaching perceived by respondents positively predicted their perceptions of stress regarding online teaching. Furthermore, this paper discusses the future perspectives of online teaching transformation based on expectancy value and self-efficacy theories. Especially, the findings of this paper provide a first look at the stress mechanisms of in-service teachers and initial information regarding stress reduction and professional development of in-service teachers in online teaching.