Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation

5-2024

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Ed. D.

Department

Educational Leadership, Evaluation and Organizational Development

Degree Program

Educational Leadership and Organizational Development, EDD

Committee Chair

Powers, Debbie

Committee Co-Chair (if applicable)

Yarbrough, Rachel

Committee Member

Yarbrough, Rachel

Committee Member

Munoz, Marco

Committee Member

Howard, Brandy

Author's Keywords

teacher resiliency; COVID-19; stress burnout; growth

Abstract

COVID-19 has not only caused anxiety and fears among teachers for their own health and that of their families; they are also facing increased responsibility. Planning periods had been replaced with coverage periods, where teachers must teach other classes when their colleagues are out—often due to illness—because the supply of substitute teachers cannot meet the demand (Barton & Dickason, 2022). Teaching is a demanding profession, and there will always be stress associated with a job where so many external factors come into play (Hansen, 2013). However, in the face of adversity some teachers were thriving. They are showing up and creating environments in which their students can succeed. It is notable that adversarial or post-traumatic growth is in play. Post-traumatic growth (PTG) is a theory that explains this kind of transformation following trauma. It was developed by psychologists Richard Tedeschi, PhD, and Lawrence Calhoun, PhD, in the mid-1990s, and holds that people who endure psychological struggle following adversity can often see growth afterward (Collier, 2016). This qualitative action research project utilized the phenomenological method as a means of synthesizing job demand theory, resilience theory, and post-traumatic growth transcripts. Postliminary, I will disaggregate the data to make connections and draw insight on the phenomenon of post-traumatic growth after COVID-19 in teachers.

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