The COVID-19 pandemic presented many challenges to schoolwork all over the world. In Icelandic upper secondary schools all teaching was converted to emergency remote teaching (ERT, Bozkurt & Sharma, 2020) in March 2020. Teachers had one weekend to prepare for this enormous shift in their work and ERT was the norm till the end of the semester. In the autumn semester, schoolwork was optimistically organized as classroom-based or a mixture of classroom and remote teaching, only to revert to remote teaching as school buildings were closed to students again after a few weeks. The uncertainty and constant changes tested teacher’s adaptability and resourcefulness especially because few teachers had prior experience of remote teaching, let alone the ERT when previously planned teaching was suddenly moved online.

A sudden crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupts the norms and traditions that characterize teacher’s work (Ragnarsdóttir, 2018; 2021) and it is known that changes may be challenging and stressful (Fullan, 2016; Ragnarsdóttir & Jóhannesson, 2014). It is not surprising that there was considerable insecurity among teachers globally regarding their duties and how to go about them during the pandemic (UNESCO, n.d.). The shift from classroom teaching to remote teaching could be a chaotic and stressful (see e.g. Hargreaves & Fullan, 2020; Harris & Jones, 2020), even under the best of circumstances (Huber & Helm, 2020). Closing of school buildings altered the interaction between teachers resulting in isolation that presumably increased the stress they were under.

The aim of this study is to investigate how teachers at the upper secondary level performed their duties under the new circumstances in 2020, especially during the first COVID lockdown in spring but also as the pandemic continued. Special emphasis is laid on how they experienced their working conditions, e.g., in terms of their definition of duties, stress, collaboration and administrative obligations, as well as their interaction with students and their parents. The support provided to teachers during the first stages of the pandemic, both technological, pedagogical and social is analysed.  We investigate if these factors were affected by gender or school size. This may provide indications for the organisation of both teacher education and teacher’s professional development.

The study is a part of a larger long-term research: Upper secondary education and COVID-19: crisis, challenges, and adaptability. The research project received a grant from the Icelandic Research Fund 2021-2023 (No 217900-051).

From the onset it was evident that it was vital to document and investigate what happened during those extraordinary circumstances. The data used in the current paper derive from the nationwide questionnaires as well as the in-depth interviews with teachers who were transcribed and analysed. Group of researchers from the University of Iceland, School of Education, gathered information from upper secondary schools by two electronic surveys; one in the spring of 2020, the other by the end of the year (Ragnarsdóttir et al., 2022). Our results are based on teachers’ answers to questions regarding the changes made to their work during these first waves of the pandemic, as well as how they experienced their work, the level of stress, which support was on offer to them and how collaboration was affected by the ERT. Then we use interviews from the study Upper secondary education and COVID-19: crisis, challenges, and adaptability. There three different upper secondary schools were selected for further investigation and interviews were made with different stakeholders in all schools. Among them were twelve teachers who represented various genders, school subjects and levels of successful teaching during the first waves of the pandemic. We used thematic analysis when analysing the interviews with teachers (Braun & Clarke, 2021).

The first results show that the teaching profession underwent radical changes during the first period of the pandemic (Gestsdóttir et al., 2020). Upper secondary teachers felt an increased pressure and stress at work and perceived their work as more complicated than before. The data show a significant gender difference, as female teachers seem to have been primary caregivers in the homes and consequently found it more strenuous to attend to their teaching duties as well. More collaboration with colleagues during the pandemic was reported and administrative meetings were more frequent. The collaboration with colleagues proved a crucial factor when coping with the recurring changes of working conditions. This was generally viewed as beneficial to their work by a large majority of teachers. Communication with students and parents increased overall and over time, especially according to female teachers, which may have added to the increased pressure at work. The results evoke important questions concerning teachers’ working conditions. The rapid professional development undertaken by teachers led to the majority of them adopting more varied teaching approaches than before the pandemic. Nevertheless, this was accompanied by a higher level of stress and insecurity. This may carry several implications. Teacher education needs to take these changed circumstances into account and prepare future teachers for the possibilities of hybrid teaching and increased flexibility and differentiation. Both experienced and newly qualified teachers need to have access to professional development that supports them. The time and opportunities that teachers need for collaboration and peer support must be included in their work. Reflecting on the situation in Iceland during the first stages of the pandemic can serve as a basis for comparison with teachers’ working conditions in other countries. It also contributes to the discourse on how handle future crisis may be reacted to and reveals institutionalized weaknesses.

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