Browsing by Author "Åhman, Monica"

The global COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on the everyday life of teaching professionals. Induction phase teachers’ commitment to the profession takes place specifically during the first years of their career, which COVID-19 pandemic has been threatened. Previous studies have shown that the professional agency in the classroom is an important part of teachers’ professional identity and commitment to work among induction phase teachers. Work engagement is a concept related to work well-being, which is used to studying well-being through the meaningfulness of the work. Based on the results of previous studies, teachers experience work engagement, also during the COVID-19 pandemic. Work stress, a phenomenon that weakens work engagement, has increased among teachers. During the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers’ work stress has increased. The feeling of inadequacy in the teacher-student interaction is a part of comprehensive work burnout, and based on the results of previous studies it has been found to be negatively related to teachers’ experiences of professional agency in the classroom. The aim of this thesis is to provide information about induction phase teachers’ professional agency in the classroom, work engagement, work stress and feeling of inadequacy in the teacher-student interaction connections during the COVID-19 pandemic. The material used in this study was collected as a part of a wider international research project “Early Career Teachers’ Professional Agency Across Four European Countries” (Soini, Pietarinen, Pyhältö & Toom, 2018-2022). The target group of the research project were elementary school teachers, subject teachers working in middle school and special education teachers in elementary school (grades 1-9). The research material was collected between the years 2020-2021 from Finnish teachers, and 209 teachers responded. The IBM SPSS Statistics 28 -program was used in the analysis of the data. Sum variables were formed (professional agency in the classroom, vigor, dedication, absorption and feeling of inadequacy in the teacher-student interaction). Connections between variables were examined using Pearson’s correlation coefficients. Differences in background variables (gender and teacher group) were examined by using t-tests. The results of this study showed that there were statistically significant connections between the examined variables. Teachers in the induction phase who experience strong professional agency in the classroom reported that they experienced work engagement together with a lesser work stress and feeling of inadequacy in the teacher-student interaction. Those teachers who experience work engagement reported lesser work stress and feeling of inadequacy in the teacher-student interaction. There were no statistically significant results between gender and teacher groups.