Difficulties Perceived by Polish Academic Teachers in Connection with the COVID-19 Pandemic: Predictive Role of Resilience

Coronavirus epidemic (COVID-19) poses a significant challenge for the society. One of such social groups are academic teachers. The aim of this study is to become acquainted with the perceived difficulties of Polish academic teachers connected with the COVID-19 pandemic and to assess the importance of resilience in perceiving these difficulties. One hundred and one (n = 101) Polish academic teachers completed the Scale of Perceived Difficulties Associated with the COVID-19 Pandemic SOTCov19 (NA) and the Resilience Assessment Scale SPP-25. The descriptive statistics, correlation analysis (Pearson’s correlations coefficient), and progressive stepwise regression analysis were used. The study shows that Polish academic teachers experience the greatest difficulties in three areas: recreational and cultural aspect, health and care aspects, and remote working - online lessons. A significant correlation between included variables was obtained. It is also well worth mentioning that the two subscales of resilience - tolerance for failure and treating life as a challenge, and personal competence to deal with and tolerance of negative emotions - entail a predictive function in explaining the perceived difficulties, however the percentage of variance is low, unlike expected.

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