The impact of student self-disclosure on the stress and wellbeing of tertiary educators during the COVID-19 pandemic

Type of content
Journal Article
Thesis discipline
Degree name
Publisher
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Language
Date
2023
Authors
Dutton, Hilary
Sotardi, Valerie
Abstract

Workplace stress, burnout, and fatigue are commonplace amongst tertiary educators, and are compounded by the ongoing challenges of teaching and learning during a global pandemic. Amid efforts to identify and understand contributors to educator stress, student-teacher interactions have received relatively little attention. However, educators are often expected to engage in pastoral care when students disclose academic and personal problems. Receiving and responding to self-disclosure can be emotionally taxing, particularly in professional contexts of care, and therefore contribute to educator experiences of stress and burnout. In this study, we examined the relations between student self-disclosure and educator stress and wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic in New Zealand. Almost all of the 318 tertiary educators received COVID-19 related disclosures from students. Findings show that educators whose students had shared personal problems during COVID-19 were more likely to report high stress and poor wellbeing.Such communication was also associated with higher rates of workplace presenteeism, suggesting that these teachers were likely to push themselves to a level that risks illness. Fortunately, these negative impacts were ameliorated when educators also reported a sense of support in the workplace. The implications for educators and tertiary institutions are discussed, including the provision of educator training and well-resourced student support services.

Description
Citation
Dutton H, Sotardi V (2023). The impact of student self-disclosure on the stress and wellbeing of tertiary educators during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Further and Higher Education.
Keywords
self-disclosure, higher education, teacher stress, teacher wellbeing, presenteeism
Ngā upoko tukutuku/Māori subject headings
ANZSRC fields of research
Fields of Research::39 - Education::3904 - Specialist studies in education::390412 - Teacher and student wellbeing
Fields of Research::39 - Education::3903 - Education systems::390303 - Higher education
Rights
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.