On-site vs Online Teaching: Challenges and Coping Strategies

Abstract

We address in this work the relationship between the perceived demands of the teaching profession as they are conceptualized by job demands-resources model and the teachers coping strategies activated in on-site and online teaching. The participants (N=127) were a convenience sample of Romanian teachers. Specifically, we found that the teaching demands are perceived as being more challenging in online environment when teaching involves interacting with talented children, with children with behavioural problems or with abandoned children. Teachers from rural areas perceive the online teaching of talented children more demanding compared to teachers from urban areas and there are correlations between the teachers’ seniority and the teaching demands. The obtained results also showed that some teaching demands in online situation correlate significantly with certain coping strategies (e.g. the positive reappraisal coping strategy is activated by teachers who perceive the different levels of children's development as being challenging in online situation, and the acceptance strategy is used by teachers who resent an increase in teaching workload due to children who disturb the activity in the classroom). These findings are discussed in order to develop strategies to enhance the quality of teaching practices.