Prior research shows that men tend to have higher workplace buoyancy than other genders. Additionally, teachers with more teaching experience report greater somatic symptoms, but emotional exhaustion symptoms tend to be mixed and provide no ultimate conclusion. Finally, due to the nature of school location and how it can impact online learning, the researchers point out that this is an important factor to take into consideration throughout the study.

The Role of Gender, Teaching Experience, and School Location in COVID-19 and Somatic Burden Study

The study asked whether teachers were working fully remotely, half-and-half, or if they had reduced hours due to COVID-19. Previous studies (before the pandemic) have shown that different hours and different working situations will result in different modes or methods of instructional delivery to the students, but due to the fact that COVID-19 research is still relatively new, there isn’t any literature specifically examining this factor as a covariate.

The Role of Teachers’ Working Situation in COVID-19 and Somatic Burden Study


The Big Five personality domains are denoted by:
- openness
- agreeableness
- conscientiousness
- extraversion
- neuroticism

There is research to show links between particular domains and teaching, as well as stress and other mental health outcomes. For example, neuroticism has been associated with higher job demands and somatic burden. On the other hand, extraversion has been associated with higher job resources and commitment to the job/organization.

The Role of Big Five Personality Domains in COVID-19 and Somatic Burden Study

Three groups of background characteristics served as covariates in this study:
- gender, teaching experience, and school location
- teachers’ working situation during COVID-19
- Big Five personality domains of teachers

University of California, Davis

Hypothesized Model for COVID-19 and Somatic Burden Study

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2332858420986187

COVID-19 and Teachers’ Somatic Burden, Stress, and Emotional Exhaustion: Examining the Role of Principal Leadership and Workplace Buoyancy (Reference)

This study uses two main styles of leadership to show the effects on teachers’ somatic stress:
- autonomy-supportive leadership
- autonomy-thwarting leadership

Two Leadership Models in COVID-19 and Somatic Burden Study

Workplace buoyancy is defined as a teachers’ personal resource used by the individual to help thwart or navigate challenges in the workplace. The study claims that this is different from the concept of resilience, because resilience generally refers to the ability to get through chronic or extremely difficult situations, while workplace buoyancy is simply the ability to successfully navigate everyday work challenges. Therefore, the main difference is in the degree of the challenge, and the relative recurrence of the same difficulties.

For example, during COVID-19, a main challenge for many teachers was having to rapidly adjust to online learning, figuring out how to navigate their work-home life now that they were in the same place, and learning how to accommodate diverse situations in students’ homes.

In past studies, workplace buoyancy has been shown to alleviate disengagement in work, and has been associated with lower ‘failure avoidance motivation’, which is defined as motivation driven solely by a personal fear of failure. 

This study hypothesized that workplace buoyancy would be negatively associated with the three dependent variables of the study: somatic burden, stress related to change, and emotional exhaustion, because teachers that had high workplace buoyancy would be able to navigate the difficult circumstances of COVID-19 and online learning.

Workplace Buoyancy

To summarize, the study examined work-related outcomes of teachers and the role of two leadership factors, autonomy-supportive and thwarting, and workplace buoyancy on mental health outcomes: somatic burden, stress related to change, and emotional exhaustion. 

The styles of leadership were purported to be predictors of workplace buoyancy. The study also examined the interaction effect between the two different leadership styles to see whether the buffering and boosting processes identified in the JD-R model are true in this case. 

Finally, the study tested alternative models to see whether the hypothesized study model was the best way to examine the outcomes.

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