Measuring Happiness of University Teachers during Challenging Times

Abstract

Past studies have shown that teaching in colleges/universities is generally very stressful and challenging. The Coronavirus outbreak, leading to pandemic situation and consequent lockdown has further posed lot of new challenges on teachers in higher educational institutions. Since happiness is not just a personal resource of teachers, but also an essential ingredient to achieving student outcomes and excellence in education, hence researchers undertook this study to investigate how teachers, who were already under lot of stress and anxiety due to evolving nature of their job, were holding up to the challenging situation posed by the coronavirus outbreak, which on the face of it, had severely restricted their abilities and capabilities of academic delivery to achieve desired outcomes. Also, due to the VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) world that we are all living in, teachers can face similar challenging times in future as well, due to which it is essential to analyse the phenomena in detail and provide template for future actions. The study was conducted during the period Feb to March, 2020, in eight higher educational institutions, operating in the National Capital Region of Delhi. Mixed methodology approach was used, wherein quantitative method was complemented with qualitative analysis to understand the complex phenomena in its entirety. To analyse the quantitative data, descriptive and inferential statistics and SPSS software were used.

The current study has found that, despite teacher’s putting up a brave front and being primarily driven by the larger purpose and meaningfulness of their jobs, are in the negative happiness zone. Five factors have been identified that significantly impact and predict teacher’s happiness, which are “Overall Life Satisfaction”, “Quality of Work Life from Home”, “Level of positive feeling from Home”, “Engagement and meaningful work”, and “sense of control”.

Qualitative study has revealed that online method of teaching from home has caused lot of challenges for the teachers in higher educational institutions, both on personal and professional front. Teachers have made their viewpoints very clear that they prefer offline teaching any day, but it should be supplemented (not substituted) with online method of teaching form home.  Researchers have not only identified critical challenges being faced by teachers, but also shared certain specific recommendations and also conceptualized a framework to enhance teacher’s happiness in case of extended lockdown or longer crisis period at any future time. This can serve as a benchmark for any future challenging times as well, and help the academicians, administrators and policy makers to be more prepared in future.