Values can be both significant inclusive (or pro-integration) factors and barriers to the functioning of an individual in society. The values are the properties that an individual attributes to an object, situation, event or activity, in connection with the satisfaction of his or her own needs and interests. In psychological terms, values can be seen as subjective valuations (appreciation) or subjective measures of importance that a person attributes to certain things, phenomena, symbols, people, etc. Values (or value orientations) are formed and gradually differentiated in the process of socialization a person into human society. Some of them are shared only by certain groups, others by society as a whole (e.g. Rokeach, 1973; Schwartz, 2012). Just as an entire society evolves over time, so do the values of the individuals who make up that society. It is therefore not surprising that the transformation of values is influenced by a number (series) of events with a broad societal impact. These events can be events that cause various social crises. In the past, different economic crises, such as Great Depression, or the last global economic crisis of 2008–2014 (see, for example, Elder, 1999; Park, Twenge, & Greenfield, 2017; Sortheix et al., 2017), or even different wars, or the currently highly addressed topic of migration (see, for example, Daniel at al., 2013; Lönnqvist, Jasinskaja-Lahti, & Verkasalo, 2011) have had an impact on the transformation of individuals' values. The worldwide spread of COVID-19 can also be included in these events without any discussion. There is no doubt that this disease has significant psychological and social effects on the world population. In general, it has the potential to change the current (existing) values of individuals who are active in many areas of human society (cf. Saladino, Algeri, & Auriemma, 2020). One of these areas is higher education and teacher training, which is the focus of this contribution. I focus my attention especially on students of teacher training programs implemented at universities in the Czech Republic. The reason may be, among other things, the fact that the school or teachers are generally perceived as those who convey the significant values of the society. In other words, they reflect their values in the educational process and thus influence the values of the pupils taught, in general future generations. In this regard, some research already carried out can be followed up (e.g. Roccas et al., 2002; Willemse, Lunenberg, & Korthagen, 2005; Ferrari, Kapoor, & Cowman, 2005; Hadar & Benish-Weisman, 2019). However, at the same time it can be stated that the measurement of the values of students, especially students in teacher training programs, is rather absent. For this reason, my contribution can not only enrich the current view of the values of university students, but also deepen it by looking at a specific group of students in teacher training programs implemented in the Czech Republic Universities, at the time of the spread of COVID-19.

The main aim of the paper is to present the development of values and value orientation of students of teacher training programs implemented at universities in the Czech Republic during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research is methodologically based on a quantitative research strategy. The PVQ (Portrait Values Questionnaire) by Schwartz & Rubel (2005) was chosen as the data collection tool. It contains a total of 21 scaled Lickert-type items. Each item has 6 points on a scale (as amended by 1 not like me at all to 6 very much like me). The questionnaire doesn‘t contain any items, resp. open-ended questions, which are an enrichment of the research tool, but are in danger of not being filled by the respondents and are also difficult to evaluate subsequently (Rattray & Jones, 2007). The questionnaire itself consists of three parts. The first part is the introductory information, where the information that the questionnaire is anonymous is explained and clarified to the participants in the research. The second part focuses on instructions for working with the questionnaire and identifying demographic items such as age, gender, etc. The third part contains a range with given descriptions. The questionnaire was translated from English by double-blind translation with the assistance of linguists into Czech and adapted for the Czech environment. Subsequently, the research tool was transformed into an electronic questionnaire in the Google Forms. The questionnaire survey was conducted in April–November 2020 as the first phase of a larger research survey. Respondents are students in the teacher training programs of two Czech universities who have been invited to participate in a questionnaire survey en masse via university email. This contribution is based on data obtained from 505 fully completed questionnaires. Analysis of the data obtained by the questionnaire survey was done through descriptive, inductive and multidimensional statistics in Statistica 12 and SPSS 22.0. The reliability of the questionnaire was determined by the Cronbach alpha coefficient after the operationalisation of obtained data. Next, I did a factor analysis with Varimax rotation. This type of rotation is typical for pedagogical and psychological research surveys that work with data requiring analysis through factor analysis (e.g. Cureton & Mulaik, 1975; Williams, Onsman & Brown, 2010). The suitability of the factor analysis was determined by the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test and the Bartlett sphericity test (see Beavers et al., 2013). I also performed an ANOVA test and measured Pearson's correlation coefficient.

The first results of my research point to the relationship between selected dimensions of values in the PVQ questionnaire and the determined demographic characteristics. It turns out that students of teacher training programs implemented at universities in the Czech Republic during the COVID-19 pandemic tend to a dimension of values called Conservation, which includes areas security, tradition and conformity. Furthermore, it turns out that students at this time less prefer values that saturate the dimension of Openness to change. With regard to the independent variable - gender, the difference was that women are less open to change than men and at the same time more conservative than men. There are no significant differences within the dimensions of Self-enhancement and Self-transcendence. The results of my research also show that even students of teacher training programs implemented at universities in the Czech Republic in times of crisis (in this context, specifically with COVID-19) increase conservatism and less openness to change, or a greater inclination to safety and security (cf. e.g. Sortheix et al., 2017).

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