Primary Education in Wartime: How the Russian Invasion Affected Ukrainian Teachers and the Educational Process in Kryvyi Rih

Abstract

The ability of children in Ukraine to continue their primary education after the Russian invasion is inextricably linked to the direct providers of education – primary school teachers. This study aimed to clarify the psychological effects of the war on Ukrainian primary school teachers and their everyday educational activities, using teachers in the city of Kryvyi Rih as a case study. The research design included personal and professional data, questions on changes in students and the educational process, Psychological Stress Measure (PSM-9), Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI), Brief Resilience Scale (BRS), and Miroshnyk Teacher’s Roles Self-Assessment Scale (MiTeRoSA) integrated into an online survey conducted three months after the invasion. In the results, primary education in Ukraine during the invasion required teachers (n=495) to make significant changes in their work, namely shifts in schedules, increased workload, conducting remote lessons, providing tutoring for certain students, conducting crisis interventions with a broader range of subjects, and volunteering. The majority of the surveyed practitioners experienced considerable stress due to a significant increase in the amount of time they spent preparing their lessons. The psychological conditions of primary school teachers depended on the number of students who were expelled and new students who had been evacuated from other war-torn regions, the ability of school administrators to re-organize the work for online teaching, and perceived support from colleagues. All of these factors along with resilience were predictors of stress and burnout among teachers in wartime. Teachers experiencing burnout, especially exhaustion, high-stress scores, and low levels of resilience frequently evaluated the performance of their students with more leniency. In addition to a list of typical teachers’ roles (MiTeRoSA), teachers indicated frequently taking on the new roles of a ‘tutor’ and a ‘crisis counselor’ in response to the war.