Examining teacher appraisals and occupational health indicators across school contexts following COVID-19

This study used district-wide climate surveys to examine teachers’ ratings of stress vulnerability, instructional support, and job satisfaction. Data was collected in the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 Pandemic, in the 2022–2023 and 2023–2024 school years. The research objectives were to examine: (1) how teacher ratings of classroom demands and resources, as indicators of stress vulnerability, are associated with their job satisfaction and perceived levels of instructional support, and (2) how these associations are invariant with respect to wave of data collection and school characteristics such as socioeconomic status and school demography. Participating teachers across the two waves (n = 1,830, n = 1,559) worked within 47 different schools in a large Southwestern school district. Multilevel modeling was used, and in line with previous research conducted in the school years right before and after the pandemic, teachers’ appraisals of classroom demands and resources were associated with job satisfaction and ratings of instructional support. Most of the variance in risk for stress was accounted for at the individual teacher level, as opposed to the school level, and the strength of these associations was very consistent across school settings.