Career-related concerns and opportunities in the times of COVID-19 pandemic among preservice teachers

ABSTRACT

COVID-19 had sudden effects on education by inducing school closures, obligating distance education, and cancellations in schedules. This phenomenological study explores the pandemic-related career concerns of graduating preservice teachers and their strategies to cope with these challenges; and also considers whether the pandemic brought new career opportunities. Findings suggest that participants of the study experienced concerns in several areas including graduation, employability, and future teaching competencies; however, they also developed preventive coping strategies and found new opportunities. To cope with the pandemic, participating preservice teachers tried to stay positive about their occupational futures and attempted to remain prepared for possible problems in future practice. They also emphasised the role of self-care in learning to function well psychologically in crises to guide and support their students’ psychosocial skills. Finally, participants found opportunities to improve their technological skills, develop crisis management skills, and discover new career opportunities. Implications for education are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Chance events
• career concerns
• career preparation
• COVID-19
• preservice teachers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Gözde Şensoy Murt

Gözde Şensoy Murt, She earned her bachelor and master’s degrees for counselling from Dokuz Eylul University at Izmir, Turkey. She is now a doctoral student and research assistant at Middle East Technical University. Her research interests include trauma, disaster psychology, and ethics in counselling.

Özgür Erdur-Baker

Ozgur Erdur-Baker from The University of Texas at Austin (e-mail: [email protected]). She currently teaches at Middle East Technical University at Ankara as full professor at counselling department. Some of her research interests are crisis counselling, trauma, grief and disaster psychology, gender and culture sensitive counselling, and peer bullying.