The importance of environmental factors in the evaluation of the wellbeing of teaching students in the "post-covid's" period
Abstract
The paper monitors the development of susceptibility to stress in first-year students at one faculty of education in the Czech Republic in the years 2017-2022. The basic research question is whether it is possible to statistically prove a trend in the degree of susceptibility to stress between it can be assumed that in such a short spacing, the fundamental difference between the two groups is the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and long-term distance learning.
At the same time, in addition to the analysis of susceptibility to stress, attention was focused on the subjective evaluation of the effects of stressors of various natures among students and the impact of stressors on their well-being feeling. The research survey was devoted to students of various studies, the data for the purposes of this paper are filtered according to study focus (teaching) and according to the year - for this paper we present data aimed only at first-year students. We consider the selection of a group of first-year students to be crucial, as in this period of study there is the most significant fluctuation of university students (RVŠ research surveys, 2020, Fišer, Vltavská et al., 2016).
The basic diagnostic tool was the Burnout Syndrome Questionnaire (Tošner &
Tošnerová, 2002), which evaluates primarily susceptibility to stress, and a questionnaire focused on the evaluation of environmental (institutional and social) factors influencing students' wellbeing.
A one-way ANOVA model was used for statistical evaluation, followed by multiple comparisons with the Bonferroni multiplicity correction.
Based on the obtained data, it is possible to consider what environmental factors affect the wellbeing of students and which can be influenced by the university, which acts temporarily (pandemic, war) and is more appropriate to respond to short-term support activities (mental health support) and further monitor development of the trend in the given area in the following years as well.
The limitations of the study may be: individual coping strategies for managing the challenging situations of teacher students and students preparing for helping professions enrolled in the research survey, which may differ and thus affect the perception of environmental contexts; students have different fields of study, so the influence of various environmental factors resulting from the characteristics of the department / institute can be found in this direction as well; generational differences - differences in susceptibility to stress.