This study explored the technostress experienced by elementary school teachers in Kaohsiung City when conducting emergency remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic and analyzed the differences of technostress with various background characteristics. Emergency remote teaching involves zero preparation time (in contrast to the 6 to 9 months that teachers spend preparing for nonemergency online teaching) because it is deployed in response to an immediate emergency. Thus, most elementary school teachers found emergency remote teaching challenging, due to their lack of experience with online teaching, and experienced technostress.
Technostress is a concept that encompasses the techno-overload, techno-invasion, and techno-complexity resulting from the use of technology tools. Techno-overload is the increased teaching load resulting from having to develop new teaching materials and assessments that incorporate remote teaching technology tools. Techno-invasion is the invasion of teachers’ privacy that results from teachers having to receive messages from students, parents, and education administration on their personal mobile devices even when off-duty. Techno-complexity is the instability and complexity of remote teaching technology tools that interfere with the teaching process, such as poor internet connections during teaching. Most studies on this topic have explored the psychological effects of teachers’ technostress. Few studies have focused on the sources of teachers’ technostress during emergency remote teaching. Moreover, no suitable teacher technostress scale for elementary school teachers is available to explore sources of technostress during emergency remote teaching. Therefore, developing a technostress scale for elementary school teachers as an instrument to investigate the sources of technostress during emergency remote teaching is necessary, and this study developed such a scale.
This study administered a survey, which was formulated on the basis of a pilot test, to elementary school eachers in Kaohsiung City during the emergency remote teaching period. In total, 138 and 352 participants completed the pilot test and main survey, respectively. Data were analyzed using SPSS Statistics 21.0 and SPSS Amos V25. The study performed exploratory factor analysis, t test, one-way ANOVA, and confirmatory factor analysis. Descriptive statistics were used. The draft of the teacher technostress scale contained 23 items across three dimensions of technostress: Techno-overload, techno-invasion, and techno-complexity. After item analysis and exploratory factor analysis were performed on the basis of data obtained from the pilot test, 19 items were left on the scale (total variance = 61.86%). The scale was used in the subsequent main survey. Second-order confirmatory factor analysis based on data from the main survey demonstrated that the scale has good discriminate validity and convergent validity (ρv = .88, .91, and .73 for first-order factors, and ρv = .83 for the secondorder factor). The confirmatory factor analysis also indicated that the model for the scale had good fit. Data from both pilot test and the main survey indicated the scale’s reliability (in the pilot test, the values for Cronbach’s α were .85, .91, and .93 for each dimension and .94 for the overall scale; in the main survey, the values for Cronbach’s α were .85, .90, and .92 for each dimension, ρc was .77, .82, and .53 for each dimension, the values for Cronbach’s α were .94 for the overall scale, and ρc was .76 for the overall scale). The results of this study show that during the emergency remote teaching period in Kaohsiung City, elementary school teachers’ technostress had three dimensions: Techno-overload, techno-invasion, and techno-complexity. The order of technostress from the higher to the lower level was Techno-overload, techno-invasion, and techno-complexity. After the education administration suddenly announced the requirement to move to emergency remote teaching, elementary school teachers had to immediately begin conducting online classes without sufficient time for preparation. Techno-overload was the major issue of elementary school teachers’ technostress. Elementary school teachers had a medium-high level of technoinvasion and techno-complexity. Support from the administration, such as workshops for online teaching skills, was important to effectively reduce the burden of techno-complexity for elementary school teachers. Overall, elementary school teachers had a medium-high level of technostress. Female teachers had significantly more technostress than did male teachers. Owing to the COVID-19 mandate, elementary school teachers in some cases conducted emergency remote teaching from home. Therefore, female teachers had to do more work, from teaching to family affairs, and therefore experienced higher levels of techno-invasion. The amount of technostress experienced by teachers significantly differed by age. Teachers aged 46 to 55 years had higher technostress than did those aged less than 35 years. Most older adult teachers are unfamiliar with online teaching. Therefore, the instability and complexity of online teaching tools caused higher levels of techno-complexity in older adult teachers than in younger adult teachers. Technostress did not significantly differ with respect to education level. This finding is inconsistent with those of two other studies (Krishnan, 2017; Ragu-Nathan et al., 2008), which found that public servants with higher education levels had lower levels of technostress. In those studies, the education levels of the participants was more broadly distributed, from high school degree to doctorate. By contrast, the teachers in the present study either had undergraduate or graduate degrees, and this narrower distribution may explain this nonsignificant finding. This study has four recommendations. First, on the part of elementary school teachers, electronic calendars should be used to enhance efficiency and collaborative working styles should be adopted to reduce workloads. Time management using electronic calendars is an effective method to complete various tasks during emergency remote teaching. Moreover, the preparation of teaching materials suitable for online teaching is time-consuming. A collaborative team approach to preparing teaching materials and assessments is an effective method to reduce elementary school teachers’ workloads. Second, on the part of administrators, elementary school teachers should be given greater autonomy, administrative procedures should be simplified, and subsidy and incentive schemes should be implemented. During emergency remote teaching, heavy workloads result in elementary school teachers often preparing teaching materials on holidays. Giving subsidies and awards to elementary school teachers according to adequate working records is reasonable. Third, on the part of the government, a real-time support system for emergency remote teaching should be constructed for teaching system errors, which are a large source of stress for teachers, to be promptly resolved. The valid and reliable scale developed in this study should be used in future studies to explore the relationship between technostress and factors such as technological skill, school support, teacher burnout, and teacher job satisfaction. |
Technostress among Elementary School Teachers in Kaohsiung City during Emergency Remote Teaching
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