Abstract:

Introduction:
Online teaching transition during COVID-19 school lockdown elicited new situations and challenges for teachers and schools across the globe. As schools shut down in some countries for almost one school year (with some breaks), remote teaching introduction brought new stressors for teachers. The aim of our study was to investigate the occurrance of the Burnout Syndrome and its specific features within the teacher community. The study was conducted in December 2020 and January 2021.

Methods:
We used quantitative research method: a questionnaire designed for this purpose was divided into 4 sections (personal data specification, teacher attitudes towards online teaching, teacher opinions on Burnout Syndrome formation and its diagnostics as measured by the standardized Maslach Burnout Inventory).

Research Sample:
337 elementary school teachers (92 % female, 8 % male) and 155 secondary school teachers (83 % female, 17 % male) participated in our study. We used the teacher Facebook platform to address potential survey respondents.

Research Results:
1) Distant online teaching: 95 % of elementary school teachers and 96 % of secondary school teachers introduced within a very short time full online classes, the rest of teachers combined online teaching with other methods. 90 % of elementary school teachers and 82 % of secondary school teachers had no previous experience with distant teaching.
2) Most teachers did not go down very well with online teaching, but 72 % of elementary school teachers and 78 % of secondary school teachers held the view that online teaching had both positive and negative aspects.
3) Most teachers needed lots of self-training to do online teaching well. They felt more exhausted as their preparation for online teaching was much more demanding and time-consuming compared with standard classes.
4) Burnout Syndrome was confirmed in the emotional exhaustion dimension (EE), of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (36 % of elementary school teachers, 35 % of secondary school teachers), but not in other two dimensions – depersonalization (DP) and personal accomplishment (PA).

Conclusion:
Members of the teaching profession experienced psychological discomfort at the beginning of the 2020–2021 academic year. Faced with the situation of COVID-19 pandemic, many teachers were dealing with new measures, situations, sometimes with a lack of clear guidelines. Working from home, using ICT for online teaching created feelings of tension, anxiety and exhaustion of many teachers as proved by our results.

Keywords:

Burnout Syndrome, teachers, Covid pandemic, school lockdown.