Building on MacIntyre et al. (2020) and Mercer & Gregersen (2020), this exploratory study examines the transition to emergency remote instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic based on questionnaire responses from nearly 8,000 educators and students from 118 countries. While a rich body of literature exists on distance education, this refers to regular courses that had been planned in advance as fully online by design—conditions drastically differed from the circumstances imposed by the current pandemic.

To examine how the stakeholders adapted to and coped with emergency remote instruction, we had constructed an original online survey composed of 441 items. Constructs of interest were derived from existing validated scales or scales developed specifically for this project. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses with direct oblimin, excluding items exhibiting cross-loading or low loadings (< .30), led to the development of over 30 new scales exhibiting acceptable to very good reliability indices (Cronbach’s α: .72–.92, McDonald’s ωₕ: .75–.92) and adequate fit as indicated by TLI and RMSEA values.

Responding to specific research questions, regression and other inferential analyses of instructors’ responses revealed that: i) teachers coped better when they worked in higher education: F=9.31, p<.001, ηp²=.02 [.01;.04] and used synchronous delivery: t=−6.2, p<.001, d=.33 [.22;.43]; ii) educators were more engaged in developing than economically developed countries: t=3.59, p<.05, d=.31 [.14;.48]; iii) psychological overload was mediated by perception of student coping; iv) instructors’ stress levels were affected by anxiety about the future, living conditions, self-acceptance, appraisal of situational impact, course optionality, and perceived effectiveness of virtual delivery; v) language teachers felt that remote instruction depressed students’ progress by around 64% compared with in-person classes; vi) future learning outcomes were the biggest cause for concern in beginner-level classes: β=.09, R²=.51, p=.026; vii) the breakup of some constructs in clusters of naturally correlating variables suggests that in crisis situations these may function differently than during ‘business as usual’, supporting the Strong Situation Hypothesis (see e.g. Meyer et al., 2010) and in line with Resnik and Dewaele (2021); viii) participants’ coping behaviour and attitudes were moderated by multilingualism operationalized as weighted proficiency in languages spoken. Although ‘more polyglot’ teachers found remote teaching harder than initially expected (r =.223), they demonstrated more stability in their lives (−.278) and instruction (−.373) and were more likely to believe that they would come out unscathed (.252). They felt their students were coping well (.302), and their classes were longer (.271). Subsequently, we shift attention to factors distinguishing better- and worse-coping students. We then compare the teacher and student subsamples side-by-side to see whether Extraversion similarly or differentially affected Anxiety in the two cohorts. A two-step cluster analysis, combining the hierarchical and k-means clustering algorithms, revealed that Extraversion influenced Anxiety only in the instructor cohort (t=6.02, p<.001, d=.28 [.16, .42]). Time permitting, we will canvass the impact of other personality traits identified through EFA: among teachers Sociability, Self-compassion and appreciation, Patience, Competence, Organization, Emotional reactivity, Orientation onto others, Adaptability, Nonverbal expressiveness, and Reticence; among learners Organization, Adaptive Competence, Sociability, Self-compassion and Self-uncompassion.

Key references: MacIntyre, P.D., Gregersen, T. & Mercer, S. (2020). Language teachers’ coping strategies during the Covid-19 conversion to online teaching: Correlations with stress, wellbeing and negative emotions. System, 94, 102352. 10.1016/j.system.2020.102352 Mercer, S., & Gregersen, T. (2020). Teacher Wellbeing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Meyer, R.D., Dalal, R.S., & Hermida, R. (2010). A review and synthesis of situational strength in the organizational sciences. Journal of Management, 36(1), 121-140. 10.1177/0149206309349309 Resnik, P. & Dewaele, J.-M. (2021). Learner emotions, autonomy and trait emotional intelligence in ‘in-person’ versus emergency remote English foreign language teaching in Europe. Applied Linguistics Review. 10.1515/applirev-2020-0096