Abstract
The COVID-19 global pandemic affected many areas adversely, mainly health and education, all over the world. In education, this sudden pandemic led to efforts to bring about a set of rapid and radical solutions. As in many parts of the world, in March 2020, Turkey took steps to mitigate the potentially devastating consequences of the pandemic by changing face-to-face (F2F) education to online education. This unparalleled change in the method of delivery was new to many teachers ranging from subject matter to foreign language teaching, from novice to experienced, and most of them were unprepared. They had to face many challenges, one of which was work engagement. To the best of the authors' knowledge, no studies have been conducted on online work engagement of instructors under the pandemic conditions in Turkey. Thus, the present study was an attempt at contributing to the field by examining second language (L2) English instructors' level of work engagement on online education and their perceptions on work engagement.
TopTeachers’ Work Engagement
Work engagement of teachers has attracted the attention of researchers and educators lately. How work engagement develops and is fostered in diverse school settings have been explored. Teachers who are engaged in their work are found to be more likely to display higher teaching performance (Bakker & Bal, 2010) and to have students who are engaged in learning (Roth, Assor, Kanat-Maymon, & Kaplan, 2007). In contrast, teachers who are highly engaged display self-determined behaviors that reflect an internal locus of causality, and that may lead to higher levels of students’ self-determined academic behaviors (Roth et al., 2007). In a more recent study, emotion regulation and psychological well-being were found to be the predictors of work engagement of language teachers (Greenier, Derakshan, & Fathi, 2021).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Teacher Work Engagement: Teachers’ work-related well-being showing engaged and higher teaching performance.
Work Engagement: A construct used to define people’s optimal functioning and positive experiences at work.
Online Work Engagement: Teachers’ work engagement on online education.
L2 English Instructors: Instructors who teach English as a foreign language to speakers of other languages at universities.
University Education in Turkey: Institutions that students enroll after graduating from high school and that offer four-year graduate programs some of which also offer one additional intensive language learning year in the preparatory schools.
Online Education Due to COVID-19: A global and a sudden shift of face-to-face education to synchronous education on online platforms.
COVID-19 Pandemic: A global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 which was first identified in December 2019 in China and which was then declared a pandemic in March 2020 by the World Health Organization.
Dimensions of Work Engagement: Vigor (mental resilience), dedication (strong involvement), and absorption (full concentration) dimensions that characterize work engagement.