Teachers’ perception of health, remote work, and the students’ situation during the COVID-19 pandemic

Objective: T o evaluate the teachers’ perceptions regarding their emotions, health and work, as well as the students’ situation, during the pandemic. Methods: Cross-sectional, quantitative and descriptive study, carried out with teachers from the public education network in the state of Piauí. The bivariate analysis model was applied using Pearson’s Chi -square test, considering the significance level at 5% to check associations and to analyze the reliability of the questionnaire. Internal consistency was calculated using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. Results: Hopeless was the emotion most perceived by teachers. Conversely, they felt satisfied with their health and work. There was no influence of sociodemographic characteristics on perceived hopeless. In addition, they stated that they had good expectations when the pandemic


INTRODUCTION
The year 2020, more precisely in March, began with a historic impact on all aspects of the vitality of millions of citizens across the planetary globe. (1)A new virus associated with a different lung inflammation was noticed in China in December 2019 and titled "SARS-CoV-2", which causes the disease popularly known as COVID-19.Due to the ease of transmission, the virus entailed a large number of infections, quickly causing thousands of deaths around the world.With these data, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a state of pandemic on the eleventh day of March 2020 (2) .
As a result, the governments of several countries adopted some containment measures, including social isolation. (2)In addition to isolation, the recommendations could impact not only the economy of the countries, with the prohibition of agglomerations and social events, as well as restrictions on travels and public transportation, but there were also impacts on education, with the closure of educational activities in both schools and universities. (3)he educational environment needed to adjust to a new model of education as it became a favorable area for the spread and contamination of the new coronavirus. (1)As preventive measures, the Brazilian Ministry of Education (MEC, as per its Portuguese acronym) published Ordinance nº 343, dated March 17, 2020, regulating the transition from in-person education to remote classes while the pandemic persisted. (4)he closure of schools and the beginning of remote teaching influenced the different aspects of schooling in terms of the teacher/student axis.This required a reorganization of the school environment, which was not in line with the new reality, especially for those who are included in the map of Brazilian social vulnerabilities, since our country has a panorama marked by great social and regional differences between students and teachers who work in the national territory. (5)he student with few financial and technological resources and in social isolation had the full role in learning and the teacher, the uncertainty regarding their real situation.In search of positive results, psychological pressure and multiple assignments unbalance health, affect the memorization process and undermine the student/teacher's reasoning.As a result, the illness of the teacher's body and mind ends up reflecting on the activities of daily life, with negative effects of a cycle formed by tired and sick individuals. (6)uring the pandemic, the teaching profile was mainly made up of teachers who lived with their families, including school-age children.The atypical demands imposed by remote teaching contrasted with the figure of the teacher responsible for his/her child adapting to remote teaching versus the teacher mediating the teaching-learning process versus the teacher also being a student, when qualification was Teachers' perception of health, remote work, and the students'... English | Rev. enferm.UFPI.2024;13:e4694| DOI: 10.26694/reufpi.v13i1.4694required to manipulate digital intelligence, thus contributing to the increased level of stress, disorientation and overload.The student showed lack of motivation, study overload, tiredness and stress. (7)ccupational stress has directly reflected social changes at all levels of education in recent times.Teachers' perceptions and complaints tend to be interpreted as common disorders in the work environment, often going unnoticed, because they do not recognize that the emotions triggered were through that environment considered as the provider of family income. (8)herefore, it is necessary to know and reflect on the teachers' health and practice during remote teaching influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the emotions felt, that is, how they perceived themselves during this new teaching process, noticed positive consequences or negative effects on their health and how they viewed the students' situation, so that society can understand the dimension and importance of fair teaching.Therefore, it is up to the public authorities to develop strategies for a more equal, accessible and motivating education, without harm to the mental, physical and social health of these stakeholders.
The scope of the current research was to evaluate teachers' perceptions regarding their emotions, health and work, as well as the students' situation, during the pandemic.

METHODS
It refers to a cross-sectional, quantitative and analytical study, carried out with teachers from the public school network in Piauí.The research took place in the respective state, which has a teaching staff made up of 37,800 teachers, 3,094 elementary schools and 662 high schools, according to IBGE 2021, without specifying private and/or public ties.In Piauí, the State Department of Education of Piauí -SEDUC/PI is responsible for 809 basic education schools. (9)n order to optimize and decentralize the work, Regional Education Managements (GRE, as per its Portuguese acronym) were established, located in municipalities with the largest population, with a set of 21 Managements; 16 in the countryside of the state and 05 in the capital Teresina.The GRE are formally linked to the Department of Education, and their purpose is to develop the programming, direction, instruction, surveillance, inspection and management of educational activities in their respective areas of competence. (10)The sample was made up of teachers from the state education network of Piauí from different modalities: professional education, Youth and Adult Education (EJA, as per its Portuguese acronym), elementary education, secondary education and other teaching modalities.
In order to describe the teachers' profile and check the association, "emotions" was selected as the dependent variable.In turn, the independent variables were: gender; age; marital status; color/race; children; number of children; number of people living in the house; person who looks after your children when you need to work; person who looks after your home when you need to work; training area; graduate studies; lato sensu; stricto sensu; length of experience in teaching; type of contract; work modality (01 modality; ≥02 modalities); school; zone; number of schools you work in; hours per week spent preparing classes; weekly hours spent managing the school; hours per week spent providing support to students; tools with internet access; perception of health; and, finally, the students' situation, being evaluated in this variable: interaction process, loss of contact, social inequalities, impacts on mental health and continuity of learning; and expectations.
In order to collect data, a virtual questionnaire was used with questions adapted from the Quality of Life at Work Assessment Questionnaire QWLQ-78. (9)The questionnaire was designed using Google® Forms, with 48 questions divided into three sections: the first was based on sociodemographic characteristics; the second, on the teachers' perception of their health and remote work; and the last was focused on the teachers' perception of the students' situation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Collection took place from September 29th to December 10th, 2020, via email.Firstly, with the 17,412 electronic addresses made available by SEDUC/PI (full name; email), where duplicate email addresses with typing errors were excluded, thus totaling 10,002 entries.The next step was to send an explanatory message about the research and a link that redirected the questionnaire to the 10,002 email addresses.
Opportunely, a message was sent to the 21 GRE coordinators, via email and the WhatsApp application (provided by SEDUC/PI), explaining the research and requesting it to be disseminated to principals.Subsequently, it was sent to teachers and from teacher to teacher, through a chain sampling procedure, seeking to obtain a statewide sample, configuring itself as a non-probabilistic convenience sample, with a return of 538 email addresses; of these, the following were included: teachers working in English | Rev. enferm.UFPI.2024;13:e4694| DOI: 10.26694/reufpi.v13i1.4694 the state education network (permanent and others), who answered the questionnaire only once and agreed to participate in the research.Conversely, the following were excluded: teachers who refused to participate in the research and duplicate participants.Finally, a sample of 509 teachers was obtained.
Data organization and tabulation took place using Microsoft Office Professional Plus Excel 2016 software (Microsoft Corp., United States).Statistical analysis was performed using Stata version 14 (StataCorp LP, CollegeStation, USA).In order to answer the hypothesis "there was a perception of negative emotions by teachers in the state education network of Piauí during the COVID-19 pandemic" and to test the association of the nominal categorical variables "hopeful/hopeless" (emotion) with the independent variables, bivariate analysis was carried out using Pearson's Chi-square test, considering the significance level at 5%, where "p" represents the probability of being null (when p > 0.05) or true (when p ≤ 0.05). (11)n order to analyze the reliability of the questionnaire, internal consistency was calculated using Cronbach's alpha coefficient.Therefore, the questionnaire showed high reliability (α = 0.8797) to analyze the health perception, the teacher's work and the student's situation.The results must be between 0 and 1, where reliability is considered very low (0.30), low (0.30 < 0.60), moderate (0.60 < 0.75), high (0.75 < α ≤ 0.90) and very high (α > 0.90). (12)urthermore, in order to characterize the teacher's profile, sociodemographic information was crossed with each type of emotion felt by the teacher during the COVID-19 pandemic.This same analysis was used in the answers about expectations regarding health when the pandemic is over; perception of health and work; and perception of the student's situation.
In order to classify the teacher's perception of health, a Likert-style response scale of 1 to 5 points was established, with the objective of standardizing the analysis of the results.Answers related to health and work ranged as follows: extremely satisfied (68 to 80 points); very satisfied (55 to 67 points); more or less satisfied (42 to 54 points); little satisfied (29 to 41 points); and not at all satisfied (16 to 28 points).The same interpretation applied to the teachers' perception of the students' situation, being: I completely agree (27 to 30 points); partially agree (22 to 26 points); neither agree nor disagree (17 to 21 points); partially disagree (11 to 16 points); and I totally disagree (6 to 10 points).
The Likert scale was not applied to the questions "how have you been feeling during the COVID-19 pandemic" and "what are your expectations regarding your health when the COVID-19 pandemic is over".The categorization of answers to these questions was adapted from Damásio, (13) who indicates emotions and feelings as associated phenomena and can be classified as primary or universal emotion (fear, sadness, joy, surprise, aversion and anger), secondary or social emotion (shame, guilt, jealousy and pride) and background emotion (which are expressed in moments of well-being or discomfort, calm or tension).Background emotions are in a secondary place, but they are what define our mental state at that moment.
Based on this concept, the types of emotions reported by teachers were classified into primary, secondary and background emotions.In order to categorize the variable "expectation", they were divided according to the concept of background emotion.Accordingly, what would be a calm = positive background emotion received a score from 1 to 3, while a tension = negative background emotion received from -1 to -3.After these divisions, the variables "emotions" and "expectations" were transformed and compiled to meet statistical assumptions, with emotions being analyzed under the names: hopeful and hopeless.Finally, expectations were divided into intensity and opposition.
The study was carried out in accordance with the guidelines established in Resolution nº 466/12 of the National Health Council (CNS), (14) with approval from the Research Ethics Council of the Federal University of Piauí on 09/15/2020, under Opinion nº 4.277.988,with Certificate of Presentation for Ethical Consideration (CAAE, as per its Portuguese acronym) nº 35464320.1.0000.5214,approved by the State Department of Education and Culture of Piauí.A free and informed consent form was provided at the beginning of the questionnaire for research participants, where they selected the option whether or not they wanted to participate in the research and whether they wanted to receive a reproduction of the document by means of email.

RESULTS
Of the 509 responding teachers from the state education network of Piauí, 64.2% are females; 50.1% are aged 49 or over; 54.6% married; 77.6% non-white color/race; 64.4% have children; 42.4% have two or more children; 29.1% live with four people; 41.7% say that other people look after their children while they are working and 43.2% look after the house after school classes (Table 01).
Teachers' perception of health, remote work, and the students'...The questionnaire used to measure the different underlying constructs: "teacher's perception of health and work", which consisted of 16 questions, and "perception of the student's situation", with 6 questions, showed a high level of internal consistency, determined by alpha Cronbach's coefficients of 0.874 and 0.810, respectively.In the general construct, it also showed high reliability (α = 0.8797).
Bivariate analysis using Pearson's Chi-square test showed a significant association with emotions, sociodemographic characteristics: gender (p: 0.000), age (p: 0.038) and skin color (p: 0.038), as shown in Table 02.A significant association was also identified between the teacher's perception of health and emotions (p: 0.000), as well as between opposition expectations and emotions (p: 0.023).As for the teacher's perception regarding his/her own health and work, 6.1% classified them as extremely satisfied; 42.6% very satisfied; 39.3% more or less satisfied; 11.0% were little satisfied and 1.0% was not at all satisfied with their own health and work.Regarding the teacher's perception of the students' situation, 22.2% partially agreed; 50.1% partially agreed; 23.2% neither agreed nor disagreed; 4.5% partially disagreed that there was interference in the interaction process, loss of contact, increased social inequalities, impacts on mental health and continuity of learning during the COVID-19 pandemic (Table 03).

DISCUSSION
The teachers' perception of their own health and work was classified as very satisfactory.Conversely, the most frequent feeling was that of hopeless, although they chose to report good expectations when the pandemic was over.English | Rev. enferm.UFPI.2024;13:e4694| DOI: 10.26694/reufpi.v13i1.4694This is similar to what a survey with teachers from the countryside of Ceará shows, which revealed teachers feeling recurring anguish and a feeling of helplessness, as well as the transposition of their duties, due to the scenario brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to the individualities of the students and work-related concerns that they did not have before the pandemic. (15)t is also observed in the qualitative research carried out with teachers from the metropolitan region of Cuiabá-MT, where, despite the limitations, the challenges heightened by the use of communication technologies and the slow process of adaptation and learning, teachers still created good expectations for when the pandemic was over, because, despite the above, they were dealing with enriching situations that could change education in the country.Nevertheless, it is something to be studied, since social inequalities are still part of Brazilian daily life. (16)alloy-Dinis and collaborators, in 2020, when studying cognition, emotion and behavior in the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighted that, during adverse and exhausting situations, it is common to increase anxiety and psychological discomfort; since, through the pandemic, there was social isolation, remote work and several other restrictions, causing negative effects on working conditions and health care. (17)his study showed that the emotion most reported by teachers was hopeless and that it is strongly linked to the school environment.When there is a perception of negative emotions resulting from inflexible situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, they will be more likely to report anger and anxiety, unlike pleasurable situations that reflect motivation and improved memory, thus contributing to the teachinglearning process. (18)t is important to highlight that the standard of satisfaction and security in which the educator is able to carry out his/her work in the face of the pandemic, as well as the quantity and quality of teaching, become government goals and social demands, with the desire for improvements in teaching and less harm to teachers and students, as not all students had contact with digital equipment with internet access to follow classes. (19)he analysis of the characteristics of teachers, the social context in which they are inserted and also of their health status is of utmost importance for understanding their reality.Based on the collected information, it will be possible to understand the individual exhaustion/illness that tends to reflect and interfere in the work process.It should be remembered that teachers are not included in public policies in a more direct way, as they are just taking part like the general population. (6)he study also revealed an association between emotion and sociodemographic characteristics, such as gender, age, skin color, teacher's perception, and opposition expectation.In Aguiar's (2019) exploratory research on emotions and feelings, he explains that human beings do not have control over their emotions; they are felt unconsciously, precede perception, and become advantageous when they are used to generate behavior in the face of an immediate stimulus, that is, it will require emotional control from the teacher to act intelligently in the face of the perceived emotion. (20)hen analyzed in semi-structured interviews, emotions show that they can be divided into pleasant or positive and unpleasant or negative.What will define its characteristic will be the type of challenge to which that individual was exposed.In the educational environment, pedagogical and technological characteristics trigger feelings and physiological responses to the manifested stimulus. (21)ramês, Antão and Anastácio (2020) presented a cross-sectional and quantitative study with teachers from the Northern Region of Portugal, where they identified that perception of health was considered as reasonable (43%) or good (28.8%) and 59.9% reported not feeling prepared to work remotely, which makes clear the need for a focused look at teacher preparation for a transformation in educational activities. (22)n the current study, teachers partially agreed that there was harm to students with the closure of schools due to the pandemic.However, when one considers that this harm was not just the absence of the classroom, but that there was a reduction in physical activity, little stimulation in motor and cognitive development, risk of domestic violence, loss of bonds, weight gain, longer time in screens, irregularities in sleep patterns, one can realize that the harm goes beyond school walls. (23)n a survey of 583 Indian students, Khattar, Jain and Quadri (2020) stated that there was a loss of interaction, discussion and personal attention in remote teaching, as well as more frequent episodes of anxiety and stress.Furthermore, 19.2% reported having become tired of using their cell phones during the pandemic, 42.9% felt frustrated, bored, overwhelmed and depressed.Therefore, it is clear how technologies can help teaching or cause harm to students.(24) English | Rev. enferm.UFPI.2024;13:e4694| DOI: 10.26694/reufpi.v13i1.4694Another point highlighted in the current paper is the prevalence of females, aged 49 years or older, married, as opposed to a quantitative study carried out with teachers from Cajazeiras-PB, where there was a prevalence of males (68.8%), unmarried, aged between 23 and 35 years (43.8%).(25) In another study carried out with 15,654 educators during the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of scientists from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG, as per its Portuguese acronym) identified that, when it comes to early childhood education, female teachers predominate and are up to 29 years of age.Nonetheless, the number of male teachers increases in later stages of education, reaching up to 42% in secondary education.(26) It can also be observed a higher prevalence of teachers of non-white color/race, who had two or more children, whose children are looked after by others while they worked, who lived with four people and who looked after the house after classes.These factors contribute to a troubled work environment, entailing illness in the body and mind, thus generating anxiety, stress, fear and depression.
The panorama of the emotional losses suffered by teachers in Cachoeira do Sul/RS shows that the group of surveyed teachers had emotions defined as negative (anxiety, sadness, insecurity, fear, disgust and anger) more accentuated during the COVID-19 pandemic and were added to other issues, such as: discomfort, personal and professional life, lack of psychological support and overload in domestic activities. (27)he psychic interpretation highlights the existence of increasing numbers of exhaustion, feelings of tension, depression and mood disorders in the teachers' lives, influencing their behavior and professional performance, as a consequence of longer workloads and the demand to carry out activities related to new demands with increasingly better quality. (28)egarding the area of training, the area of human sciences had greater prevalence, as well as having a lato sensu graduate degree, working for up to 10 years in teaching, being permanent, working in a type of teaching modality and having a link to only one school in the state network.Currently, the deficiency in the training and qualification process of Brazilian teachers is noticeable, and they remain unprepared to become autonomous and deal with technologies.This is contradictory, as they are education professionals who, for some reason, are unable to qualify. (29)n this study, teachers who worked in the urban area of the municipalities and in just one school demonstrated greater attendance, being responsible for up to 10 classroom groups.In Brazil, the teaching staff is allocated in urban or rural regions, in municipal, state and federal institutions, in the public and private networks, carrying out their duties in a fragmented or absolute time, in a single school or in several schools, through different forms of contract and employment, often motivated by financial need. (16)urthermore, most teachers answered that they worked more than 31 hours per week, spent more than 21 hours preparing materials for classes and still reserved part of their time for school management and providing support to students.This situation corroborates a study carried out with teachers in six Brazilian states, which showed that their activities belong to different realities and begin with lesson planning and extend to home (evaluations, records and meetings).It is work that goes beyond classrooms, even permeating personal life, influenced by the management of each school, whether in urban or rural zones, public or private facilities, making the profession overloaded. (30)t is important to highlight that, in this research, most of the teachers had good working tools with internet access, different from what was found in an intervention study, carried out in the countryside of Ceará, which identified a good number of teachers with a lack of resources for their remote work, creating difficulties in the development of their activities and psychological suffering due to the generated overload. (31)n the research by the Study Group on Educational Policy and Teaching Work (Managed) at UFMG, our attention was drawn to the statement by teachers about the lack of support from public authorities in terms of preparing remote teaching, where 55% answered that they were not receiving any training to work during the pandemic and 17% had access to online tutorials on how to use virtual tools.Furthermore, 53% of the teachers in the municipal network and 24% in the state network did not obtain any type of training for the use of technologies. (25)t is important to underline that technologies are being favorable for teaching.However, one cannot forget that there must be other ways of including the student and his/her educational needs, as the classroom offers practicality for conversation, while the virtual class must provide the active participation of the student until the pedagogical objective proposed by the teacher is reached. (31)ccordingly, it is understood that teachers are only users of technology and that they are too resistant to continue working in a way that allows these resources to also be used by students, discussing

Table 1 .
Sociodemographic characteristics, work, health, and the students' situation from the perspective of teachers in Piauí.Teresina, PI, Brazil, 2020.

Person who looks after your home Tools with internet access
Teachers' perception of health, remote work, and the students'... answers containing missing because it is an open question that favors typing errors by the surveyed person.As also shown inTable 01, the highest percentage of undergraduate studies is in the area of human sciences, with 54.4%; among the others, 79.4% have a graduate degree; 75.2% in lato sensu graduate studies; 8.3% stricto sensu type; 41.0% have up to 10 years of teaching; 61.9% are effective; 84.9% work in the "normal" modality (01 modality); 70.3% are only linked to a state school; 82.9% work in the urban area of the municipalities; 82.9% work in just one school; 41.3% work in 6 to 10 classrooms; 64.0% work 31 and/or more hours per week; 57.6% spend 21 and/or more hours preparing classes; 76.4% spend between 1 to 9 hours on school management; 65.0% spend between 1 and 9 hours providing student support; 86.2% have good work tools with internet access.As for emotions, 90.2% have a feeling of hopeless; 90.0% have good expectations (intensity expectations [Table 01]) for when the COVID-19 pandemic is over.

Table 2 .
Factors associated with emotions among teachers in Piauí.Teresina, PI, Brazil, 2020.Teachers' perception of health, remote work, and the students'... Teachers' perception of health, remote work, and the students'... answers containing missing because it is an open question that favors typing errors by the surveyed person.The characteristic "weekly hours spent managing the school" (characteristic introduced in Table01) was not included in the analysis.

Table 3 .
Equitable table related to the teachers' perception of work, health, and the students' situation, Piauí.Teresina, PI, Brazil, 2020.