Teacher Resilience During COVID-19: Comparing Teachers’ Shift to Online Learning in South Africa and the United States

The Covid-19 pandemic created the largest global disruption of education in recorded history. This unique qualitative study examined teacher resilience as they taught remotely with technology during the pandemic, and the experiences of teachers with a comparison across a developed country (US) with a developing country (South Africa). Data from a teacher resilience survey was gathered to explore factors of teacher resilience and interview data provided insight into teacher experiences. A grounded coding methodology was used to analyze the content. Within the examination of the extant literature, a Socio-Ecological Technology Integration framework (SETI) was developed and presented as a lens to conceptualize the full extent of all the socio-ecological factors involved in teacher technology integration including those in the school, district, and nationally. The findings reveal that teachers in South African reported less support and resources and greater challenges, yet overall reported themselves as more resilient than teachers in the US. From the findings, six factors emerged that impacted teachers’ experiences during ERT: self-efficacy, growth, motivation, resources, support, and teacher challenges. The major challenges from both countries were: time management, student issues, isolation, anxiety, meeting student needs, technology, and student engagement.