COVID | Free Full-Text | Evaluating Teachers’ Workplace Climate and Anxiety Response during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Role of Information Seeking Platforms

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic became a major life-threatening encounter. The disease’s emergence prompted a few modifications in the education system in numerous regions of the world, influencing the school climate (learning environment). Working circumstances, consisting of mediums of instruction and school physical activities, amplified workload/job demand among instructors and learners, prompting psychological consequences such as stress, fear, depression, tension, and anxiety among both educators and learners [1,2,3,4]. During this time, the security and wellbeing of instructors and learners was a main issue for states, districts, and stakeholders upon the reopening and continuation of school activities [5]. This study assesses the workplace climate and anxiety of senior high school (SHS) teachers while examining the roles of social media and professional platforms.

In the context of this research, “workplace or school climate refers to teachers’ perceptions of physical school environmental safety from the level of risk they might have been exposed to during the pandemic”. From the perspective of safety needs in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, “a positive school climate (i.e., a safe school environment) is a fundamental need for all humans that must be satisfied/fulfilled before one can enjoy and appreciate other needs” [6]. Drawing from social cognitive theory, Bandura [7] proposed that workplace environmental variables influence how educators perceive themselves as active and dynamic facilitators within the learning context during the pandemic. The issue of workplace climate is likely to be of great concern at a time when schools resumed after the COVID-19 outbreak. Obviously, teachers may be worried about their safety within the school environment during teaching and learning activities.

Fundamentally, an individual’s safety or security is achieved and acknowledged when the individual can function and work normally with few or no imaginary discernments or actual experiences of physical or mental torture [8]. Consequently, providing a safe workplace environment for educators during the pandemic, such as relatedness/connectedness, wellbeing and safety plans, and support networks, could help them perform their obligations meticulously and steadily and be satisfied with their job [9]. Teachers who work in positive, supportive, and helpful learning conditions are more likely to feel safe in the face of adversity because they develop a sense of belonging and contribute to the development of their school and community. As a result, a perilous school environment adversely impacted educators’ emotional wellness, mental health, pedagogical practices, and social capital formation during the pandemic [10,11,12,13]. Given the relevance of safety to mental health outcomes, research in this form is essential to assess the school safety climate after the resumption of school.

Previous investigations established associations between school environment/climate and mental health consequences (e.g., anxiety, fear, depression, panic, stress) among teachers [4,12,14,15,16]. Other studies have found that an unsafe classroom environment (e.g., unprepared virtual instruction, poor working conditions, inadequate personal protective equipment, insufficient administrative support, limited technology, readiness, and preparation) is a significant predictor of teachers’ COVID-19-related anxiety [12,17,18,19,20]. Studies in Asian countries like Japan, Indonesia, and Pakistan also found workplace contamination, job demands, and an unsafe workplace climate as determinants of teachers’ COVID-19-related anxieties [21,22,23,24]. Teachers may minimise the level of anxiety during the pandemic as a result of the school climate through information from social media platforms (social networking sites/virtual/web-based entertainment podiums). The heightened utilisation of social networking websites has been recorded in recent studies during the COVID-19 pandemic [25,26]. Social media podiums provide manifold podiums for educators to help one another, promote the distribution of health and wellbeing data, disseminate educational content, and support medical education to aid with the management of the pandemic and keep people connected despite the imposition of social/physical distancing [27,28,29]. During this pandemic, teachers received different COVID-19-related evidence from both conventional and electronic media podiums, including social media, and professional and non-professional platforms. These platforms could serve as powerful mechanisms that either increase or decrease the strength and direction of the influence of school climate on teachers’ COVID-19-related anxiety.

However, excessive usage of social networking sites became a source of concern during the epidemic. Relatively, the information on some of these platforms was misleading or inaccurate, which led to poor health choices and anxiety among the general public. The users of these platforms spread erroneous estimations of cases and deaths, wrong information, hearsay, and paranoid ideas during the pandemic, which caused fear, panic, and anxiety among the general public, including teachers and students [4,13,30,31,32,33,34]. Aside from social media platforms, teachers also managed their pandemic anxiety emanating from the learning environment via professional platforms. These professional platforms acted as a resource, and potential buffer against mental health consequences as a result of the COVID-19 epidemic. Teachers could receive several social supports (e.g., health information, emotional support) from experts like health professionals on life safety/security, overall wellbeing, disease and symptom control, a recovery plan, and how to reduce anxiety and depression during the crisis [35,36,37,38,39,40,41]. Hence, social support and information from professional platforms served as a protective mechanism for coping with the global pandemic.

In Ghana, physical workplace or school safety among teachers and students has been a major concern among the government and other policymakers. Accordingly, the government has, over the years, made conscious efforts to improve the physical working environment for teachers and learners. However, the pandemic worsened the situation during the COVID-19 crisis. The outbreak of the virus led to an infrastructure and digital divide among schools and individuals in Ghana [1]. This gap increased the demands/workloads on teachers and students, causing psychological consequences such as depression, anxiety, stress, fear, and panic [42,43,44,45]. Previous studies in Ghana revealed that both teachers and students perceived their school environment to be unsafe during the pandemic [4,12,16]. This safety concern may cause anxiety among teachers because of feelings of isolation and a lack of support. Teachers experiencing work anxiety due to an unsafe workplace climate may experience teacher burnout, job dissatisfaction, disengagement, and poor performance and may negatively affect students. Teacher anxiety may create classroom environments that are less conducive to learning, which could lead to poor students’ performance, lost interest, and decreased motivation for learning.

Globally, there are examinations on workplace environment and COVID-19-related anxiety among residents, including teachers [17,20,21,22] and how social networks and professional platforms affected their COVID-19 anxiety [25,27,33,46]. However, empirical inquiry on teachers’ perceived workplace climate and anxiety and the roles of social media and professional platforms as information sources during epidemics is limited. Most studies in Ghana focused on knowledge, risk perceptions, anxiety, school climate, preparedness towards COVID-19, and coping strategies [4,12,16,43,45,47,48,49]. Hence, there is a “knowledge gap in the mental health and psychology literature”, which the present investigation seeks to fill. Accordingly, assessing and understanding teachers’ perceived workplace climate and anxiety during COVID-19 and the roles of social media and professional platforms as information sources are critical. The rationale of this study was to evaluate the workplace climate and anxiety of high school teachers while examining the roles of social media and professional platforms. Specifically, the following objectives guided the research:

• Assess the association between workplace climate and COVID-19-related anxiety.

• Examine the moderating role of professional platform use in the relationship between workplace climate and anxiety.

• Investigate the moderating role of social media platform use in the relationship between workplace climate and anxiety.

During the COVID-19 outbreak, many individuals feared working in person and resorted to working through virtual means due to the fear of contracting or infecting others with the disease. This current study aligns with those of previous studies globally [17,18,19,20,23,24]. Studies in the USA, for instance, found that the presence of colleague teachers and other visitors became a worry to teachers as they feared being infected with COVID-19 [17]. Similarly, Quansah et al. [4,16], in Ghana, discovered that both “teachers and students perceived the school environment as unsafe due to uncertainty about their safety, inadequate personal protective equipment (PPE), and discomfort during lessons”. Though their study was among students, it is of essence to teachers since both teachers and students operate within the same environment. Although teachers’ anxiety explained workplace climate to an appreciable extent, other conditions in the workplace climate (e.g., warmth, support, interpersonal relations, positive culture, teaching and learning resources, sense of community) could be considered in reducing teachers’ anxiety during stressful situations like the COVID-19 pandemic [57].

When professional platform usage interacted with workplace climate, the interaction term could not predict COVID-19-related anxiety. This finding suggests that obtaining COVID-19 health-related data from “professional platforms” does not necessarily cause variations in the connection between workplace climate and COVID-19-related anxiety. Comparatively, other examinations have established that the medium by which an individual obtains health-related data can affect and build his/her anxiety level during the pandemic [57,58,59]. Prior research has indicated that professional platforms could act as a resource, potential buffer, or important mechanism for reducing the mental health consequences emanating from the COVID-19 pandemic. With this understanding, teachers could receive several social supports through health information or emotional support from experts like health professionals to help manage their overall wellbeing [37,39]. Reasonably, the information teachers receive from these professional platforms is the same as that presented on broadcast media such as television and radio. During the COVID-19 outbreak in Ghana, there were a series of state-sponsored and other private institution-sponsored advertisements and COVID-19 education programmes running on television and radio stations. The content of this information is usually vetted and approved by health professionals and experts. Therefore, when the same information approved by the experts and professionals is disseminated through their professional platforms, the expected education may not occur since that might have already been carried out on the radio or television. This situation might have resulted in the nonsignificant moderation effect of professional platform use as an information source in the link between workplace climate and anxiety responses.

Other findings indicated that social media use moderates the connection between the workplace safety environment and COVID-19-related anxiety among SHS teachers. That is, the link between school climate and teachers’ anxiety, although negative, was strong among the teachers who did not use social media platforms, relative to those who used them. The implication is that, comparatively, with an improved workplace climate, educators who received COVID-19 information through virtual network sites were bound to experience higher levels of anxiety than educators who did not learn about COVID-19 through social media. Consistent with other studies [30,31,33,34], teachers who selected “social media and commercial media” as their main sources of data about the pandemic were bound to feel anxious. Social or virtual network handlers (i.e., users) frequently disseminate rumours, conspiracy theories, misinformation, and even inaccurate estimates of COVID-19 cases and fatalities, which make people more afraid and anxious overall, including teachers, as has been shown in some studies. For example, Zhao and Zhou [34] found that social media usage by teachers had a higher risk of becoming fearful of COVID-19, which led to mental health problems such as depression and anxiety. Similarly, learners who received data from virtual platforms and radio experienced high levels of anxiety in Ghana during the COVID-19 crisis [4] because, information from those platforms was not officially examined and reviewed accordingly [58]. Meanwhile, it has already been discovered that teachers in Ghana predominantly make use of WhatsApp and Facebook platforms [60,61]. Given this notion, it is likely that information from such outlets might be contaminated with inaccurate information, which results in increased anxiety levels among teachers [57,58].

Relatedly, other key factors could also explain the relationship revealed among the workplace climate, use of information sources, and anxiety response levels of the teachers. A key factor is the level of digital health literacy of the teachers at the time of conducting this research. It is possible that teachers who have a higher level of digital health literacy might not experience much anxiety even when they rely on social media or a less protective environment [62,63]. Such teachers will be able to evaluate the accuracy of the information retrieved from social media, and this can explain their mental health outcomes. It must be quickly mentioned that although some information on social media may be inaccurate, there is a high possibility of obtaining accurate information from the same platform. It has also been found that financial resources and coping are critical in explaining anxiety levels in the presence of a poor protective environment and dependence on inaccurate information sources [64,65,66]. This connection suggests that teachers who find themselves in a less protective school environment and yet depend on social media outlets for information may not show an intense anxiety response when greater financial resource and an active coping strategy are adopted. These dynamics are likely to exacerbate or alleviate anxiety levels among the teachers. Future studies may target these critical variables to expand the discussion on the anxiety responses of teachers.