Natural and social crises that disrupt education—such as the COVID-19 pandemic, earthquakes, and floods—bring significant changes to the educational process. The COVID-19 pandemic (hereinafter the pandemic) caused the most widespread and prolonged disruption of education in the last century. The unprecedented challenges it introduced into the educational environment have spurred extensive research and academic discussions. While much of this research has focused on students, studies on teachers’ work-related well-being during the pandemic remain relatively scarce (Pressley & Rangel, 2023). However, existing findings indicate that the pandemic profoundly altered teachers' professional and personal lives, increased their work-related and general stress, and impacted both their personal and occupational well-being. Several studies (e.g., Kupers et al., 2022; Wong, 2020) have established a negative correlation between stress and well-being. While the sources of teachers' stress during the pandemic have been explored to some extent, research on the mechanisms that supported teachers in mitigating stress and enhancing well-being remains limited. Furthermore, few studies have focused on teachers' own perspectives, examining how challenges and support systems influenced their occupational well-being during and after the pandemic. Although research suggests that challenges to teachers’ well-being persisted throughout the pandemic, its long-term effects remain largely unknown (Gadermann et al., 2023).

This paper aims to contribute to these scholarly discussions and address the identified research gaps by investigating: (1) how teachers in Slovenia perceived their work-related stress and the support available for their occupational well-being during the pandemic, (2) how the pandemic affected their long-term occupational well-being, and (3) what types of support they anticipate needing in future educational disruptions.

The study integrates two theoretical approaches. First, the Job Demands-Resources Model (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017) is used to conceptualise the work environment, identifying job demands (sources of stress) and available support mechanisms—whether physical, psychological, social, or organisational—that help mitigate stress. In the second phase, these factors are categorised within Bronfenbrenner’s Socio-Ecological Framework (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), which distinguishes five levels of influence: the individual level (internal factors), micro-level (students, classroom dynamics), mezzo-level (colleagues and school leadership), macro-level (educational policies, societal factors), and chrono-level (changes over time).

Slovenia presents a compelling case study, as the pandemic marked the first large-scale disruption requiring distance learning in the country. School closures in Slovenia were prolonged and occurred with little to no prior preparation for teachers (Ermenc et al., 2021), creating numerous professional challenges. National guidelines or teacher training programs for handling educational disruptions were virtually non-existent before the pandemic. Furthermore, Slovenia currently lacks an established strategy or policy framework for managing future disruptions to education, making teachers' insights crucial for informing school- and policy-level planning. Notably, Slovenia is one of only two European countries that participated in the Responses to Educational Disruption Survey (REDS), while other research on teachers’ well-being in times of educational disruption is scarce, and most existing studies rely on non-representative samples (e.g. Mirazchiyski & Klemenčič Mirazchiyski, 2023).

This paper seeks to address the following research questions: a) What were the primary sources of occupational stress for teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic?; b) What were the main sources of occupational support for teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic?; c) How can teachers be better supported during future disruptions to regular education?

This paper is part of the basic research project “Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Schooling, Teachers, and Students: Well-Being, Teaching, and Learning”, funded by the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (2022–2025). It employs an integrative methodological approach, combining quantitative and qualitative research methods. While both approaches have been widely used to study teachers’ responses to the pandemic, to our knowledge, their combined application remains unexplored. The quantitative analysis draws on descriptive statistics from the Responses to Educational Disruption Survey (REDS) (Meinck et al., 2022), a large-scale comparative study conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). In 2021, REDS collected data from 11 educational systems worldwide, encompassing 21,063 eighth-grade students, 15,004 teachers, and 1,581 principals. This paper analyses responses from 1,422 eighth-grade teachers in Slovenia, focusing on self-reported teaching practices, stress levels, and well-being during the pandemic. The qualitative component consists of two focus groups (14 participants in total, seven per group) scheduled for February 2025. The discussions, guided by six key questions, will explore sources of stress, well-being support mechanisms, and the assistance teachers may need in future educational disruptions. Each session will last approximately 90 minutes and will be audio-recorded, transcribed using Sonix software, and analysed through qualitative content analysis with NVivo. The emerging codes will be organised according to the categories of the socio-ecological framework (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). A codebook will be developed and used for a second round of analysis, in which two researchers will independently assign one or more codes to each relevant open-ended response. In the next step, intercoder agreement will be assessed to ensure consistency. Finally, a refined set of codes will be established for every relevant open-ended response in the transcripts. The strength of this mixed-methods approach lies in its complementarity. The REDS data, based on a representative sample, allow for the generalization of findings to the entire population of Slovenian teachers. Meanwhile, the focus groups provide deeper insights into teachers’ responses in the REDS survey, offering a more nuanced understanding of the long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their occupational well-being.

Psychological and occupational well-being is a crucial factor in teachers’ ability to function effectively in both regular and disrupted educational environments. As research indicates, teachers’ well-being directly influences their work performance (e.g., Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2010) and, in turn, impacts students' learning outcomes. Without adequate support and the inclusion of teachers’ perspectives, work-related stress can contribute to teacher shortages, declining mental health, and ultimately, poorer educational outcomes for students (Robinson et al., 2023). Given these implications, teachers’ well-being during and after educational disruptions warrants greater research attention—an area that remains insufficiently explored. Understanding pandemic-related challenges and support systems from teachers' own perspectives provides a critical foundation for developing evidence-based recommendations on how to better support them—both in their current roles and during potential future disruptions to education. Preliminary findings indicate that Slovenian teachers experienced relatively high levels of work-related stress during the pandemic (Meinck et al., 2022). This study is expected to confirm several previously identified sources of stress, occupational well-being factors, and support mechanisms while also uncovering new, country-specific insights. By integrating both quantitative and qualitative research methods, the study will provide a more comprehensive understanding of the Slovenian context—filling a significant gap in existing research and importantly contributing to the European and wider international ones. Beyond its academic contribution, this paper aligns with the European Union’s future educational priorities (Council of the EU, 2021), where teachers’ well-being has been recognised as one of five key strategic goals for education policy until 2030.

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