Teacher workload and the organisation of work: a research agenda for a post-pandemic future

ABSTRACT

School teachers are working in highly complex and demanding work environments. Against this backdrop, the COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted usual ways of working for teachers, intensifying work demands through a sudden shift in the delivery of education and pressures to upskill in using new technologies. Yet how this unique crisis event has augmented teachers’ work and workload remains less known. This Research Insight contributes to understanding developments in the organisation and delivery of teachers’ work arising from the COVID-19 pandemic as well as novel research pathways for addressing the teacher workload ‘problem’ in the aftermath of the pandemic in ways that protect teachers’ ‘core work’.

KEYWORDS:

• Teachers
• workload
• work intensification
• technology
• schools
• COVID-19

Introduction

The teaching profession, globally, is in a state of crisis. A growing body of empirical research over the last decade has documented work intensification, workload demands and administrative burdens upon teachers and the effects in contributing to increased levels of teacher stress, burnout, and attrition from the profession, as well as ‘crowding out’ the time available for teachers’ to focus on their core and most valued work – educating students (Creagh et al. 2023; Fitzgerald et al. 2019; Heffernan et al. 2022). Understanding the causes, impact and solutions to this global problem remains not only a theoretical concern, but a policy imperative for governments, particularly given discussions around the unsustainability of teachers’ workload and emergent policy responses for reducing workload burdens (see Stacey et al. 2023). Such conversations are particularly urgent in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, a unique crisis event, which temporarily, albeit fundamentally, disrupted usual ways of working for teachers and intensified work demands for an already overburdened profession. Investigating the teacher workload ‘problem’ in the wake of the pandemic arguably offers novel pathways for understanding how the work of professionals, like teachers, may be organised and carried out in the future to retain essential focus on ‘core work’.

This Research Insight contributes to understanding the teacher workload ‘problem’ by advancing scholarly debate on how the pandemic, as a critical contemporary inflection point, may shape the future organisation and delivery of teachers’ work. By drawing on existing debates around workload and work intensification in the teaching profession, as well as the role of technology in shaping the organisation of teachers’ work, this research agenda offers a roadmap for future research that investigates how teachers’ work is organised and delivered to address the workload ‘problem’. While this article focuses specifically on school teachers in the context of NSW public education, one of the largest education systems in the world (NSW Department of Education 2021), given the crises discussed (workload, COVID-19) are global phenomena (see Thompson 2021), insights derived from theory, policy and practice hold salience for other jurisdictions. From here, we first present the contextual environment of teachers’ work in a pre-pandemic setting that has contributed to the workload ‘problem’, summarise key empirical insights of the pandemic’s impact in shaping teachers’ work, and set out a research agenda for investigating the organisation and delivery of teachers’ work in the future.

Teachers’ work and workload in a neoliberal policy environment

Teaching has long been described as ‘unforgivably complex’ work (Cochran-Smith 2003, 5; see also Connell 1985). Over the last decade, scholars in Australia and internationally, particularly in Western democracies, through a range of empirical studies, have documented a ‘crisis’ emerging in the teaching profession, characterised by constant curriculum change, the encumbrance of administrative tasks like data gathering and reporting, long working hours and work intensification, increased parental demands, growing accountability requirements, and heightened complexity and diversity of student learning needs (Fitzgerald et al. 2019; Loble 2022; McGrath-Champ et al. 2018).

The cause of such conditions for the teaching profession are manifold and complex (see Australian Government Department of Education 2022), yet have their origins in neoliberal ideology from governments that marketised, devolved and competitive schooling systems governed by increased school accountability produce better ‘outcomes’ for teachers’ working conditions and students’ learning (Fitzgerald et al. 2019). Since at least the 1990s, public schooling in Australia has been shaped by private sector models of management and policies which presume that decentralising administration and encouraging competition between schools produces more efficient and effective schooling (Gavin and Stacey 2022; Hogan and Thompson 2019). Decentralising reforms and enthusiasm by school principals for enhanced school-level power and responsibility (despite attendant national-level recentralisation of administrative power), however, have rendered teachers mere ‘receivers’ of policy outcomes, burdened by increased workloads (that is, quantum of work, usually measured in hours) and greater work intensification from heightened ‘accountability’ (additional time pressure to complete work) (Creagh et al. 2023; Dabaja 2022; Gavin and Stacey 2022).

The effects of these crisis conditions for the teaching workforce, like the causes, are similarly complex and multifarious. In Australian schooling, as well as in other countries (e.g. US, UK), something akin to a ‘great resignation’ is taking place in the teaching profession (Fuller and Kerr 2022). While this concept has its origins in the COVID-19 pandemic, this phenomenon, at least in school education, pre-dated the pandemic. Attraction and retention of teachers has become a critical policy concern, with evidence showing high rates of teacher vacancies nationwide in Australia, particularly in hard-to-staff areas (Longmuir 2023), with workload and stress consistently cited as core reasons contributing to resignation (see Creagh et al. 2023; Fitzgerald et al. 2019; Heffernan et al. 2022). Survey data from the NSW Department of Education shows the impact of this shortage in the state of New South Wales, with ‘almost 10,000 lessons every day … being left without adequate instruction’ (NSW Government 2023).

Compounding workforce shortages, research has also documented growing concerns around job security in the profession stemming from the decentralising policies described above. While full-time, permanent employment has been an enduring feature of the teaching profession, research has documented the rise in casual and, particularly, fixed-term forms of employment, and its effect of entrenching precarity in the profession (McGrath-Champ et al. 2023). There is growing consensus in the literature that these compounding pressures facing the profession are taking needed time away from teachers to focus on core activities for students’ learning, including lesson planning and assessment, as well as collaborating with colleagues as part of professional learning (Hunter et al. 2022; NSW Department of Education 2021; Stacey et al. 2023). This is a problem for many reasons and concerning given that teachers’ highly value their educational roles (see McGrath-Champ et al. 2018), as explained by Creagh et al. (2023, 15):

Perhaps more pernicious, because of the effect experienced by students, is the role that increased workload and/or work intensification has in constraining the capacity of teachers to address the complexities of learning needs in schools today … [T]eachers feel conflicted by the immense pull of non-teaching workload, unable to reconcile this work as beneficial to student need, but having to comply nonetheless.

Not only have work demands on the teaching profession increased in recent years, but the way in which work is delivered by teachers has also been an area of rapid change. An area gaining attention prior to the pandemic was the encroachment of technology in schools; not only how technology is embedded in curriculum or as a learning tool to support student learning, but ways it can shape the organisation and delivery of teachers’ work. At a national level in Australia, the ‘Digital Education Revolution’ advanced by the Rudd Labor Government in 2008 were leading reforms aimed at embedding technology use within students’ learning through various initiatives. Literature has also documented the growth of EdTech (educational technology) commercial firms and ‘edu-businesses’ and their role in shaping how teachers use technologies, platforms and systems for student-data collection and management (for ‘accountability’), as well as delivery of learning content (Cuskelly et al. 2023; Howard et al. 2022; Lingard et al. 2017; Williamson et al. 2021). EdTech is highly varied and multifaceted, ranging from systems that support teachers in assessment design, student feedback, reporting, lesson planning, collaboration and administration, to tools for student learning such as videos, games and tests, plus learning platforms, personalised learning tools, and more (Loble 2023). In relation to using technology as part of delivery models for students’ learning, Susskind and Susskind’s (2015) research on the future of professions notes that much of teachers’ work is surprisingly unchanged here, perhaps compared to other professional work. For instance, ‘teaching’ is usually delivered face-to-face in physical spaces with relatively small numbers of students, where expert knowledge from a single person is delivered from a fairly standard curriculum. In some specific circumstances, for example, in distance education and remote learning, the use of technology for content delivery, however, is far more common (Eradze et al. 2021).

Yet teachers’ work, how it is organised and delivered is clearly changing while remaining ‘unforgivably complex’ (Cochran-Smith 2003, 5) in a context of increased work demands, challenging teaching and learning environments, and encroachment of technologies. It is against this intensive pre-pandemic context in the teaching profession that we next turn to briefly document the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic on teachers’ work.

The COVID-19 pandemic and teachers’ work: disrupting or reinforcing trends?

The COVID-19 pandemic, a major protracted global health, social and economic crisis, prompted a significant shift in teachers’ usual work practice, temporarily, but intensively. While early in the pandemic (2020), public schools in NSW essentially remained ‘open’ with teachers continuing to educate students as ‘normal’, a more significant lockdown ensued in the state over July to October 2021 as the contagious and deadly nature of the virus spread, with many teachers required to shift to carry out their work remotely. Remote teaching and EdTech gained a new, urgent sense of importance in the sudden pandemic-induced shift to online teaching and learning, often supported by various technologies and platforms (Abaci et al. 2021; Howard et al. 2021; Williamson et al. 2020). Scholarly evidence reported how, for some teachers, this crisis event was an opportunity for innovation and experimentation amid a ‘forced’ change to standard face-to-face teaching practice; for others, a major emotional and psychological drain was borne from rapid upskilling and intensified workload (Egan 2020; Lemon and McDonough 2023; Williamson et al. 2021; Wilson et al. 2020). Despite the massive demands, research by Wilson et al. (2020, 10), reporting on the NSW context, found the vast majority of teachers identified upskilling in digital and online education as a positive outcome of the rapid transition to remote learning.

From the relatively small body of literature documenting the impact of the pandemic on teachers’ work (particularly in NSW and across Australia), studies generally depict the inadequacy of teachers’ preparedness for remote learning coupled with a need for greater institutional support and professional development, with many teachers having never taught online before and thus lacking knowledge about online pedagogical approaches or even basic technological skills (Howard et al. 2021; Lemon and McDonough 2023; Wilson et al. 2020). Just a few studies have documented the substantial impacts of pandemic-induced remote learning on teachers’ workload and wellbeing (e.g. Fray et al. 2023; Ryan et al. 2023; Wilson et al. 2020). Of these, Fray et al.’s (2023) study of teachers’ remote learning experiences in the Australian context found teachers experienced declining morale, exhaustion, low self-efficacy and a perceived lack of support. Empirical studies by McDonough and Lemon (2022) and Wilson et al. (2020) similarly reported the experience of work intensification and challenges faced by teachers in quickly and flexibly adapting to new online forms of learning to ensure continuity of students’ learning. Government reports also documented the pandemic as exacerbating the teacher workforce shortage problem (see Department of Education 2022).

The commercialisation of education (Egan 2020), a pre-COVID trend, gained significant speed and traction to ‘support’ teachers in their educational role during the pandemic. The global EdTech market, estimated to be worth some AUD $432 billion (see Loble 2023), gathered pace in the shift to remote learning and as schools sought solutions to continue students’ learning during lockdowns and phased returns to school. Williamson et al. (2020) comment on how ‘edu-businesses’ profited considerably from the pandemic with the proliferation of online platforms and ‘homeschooling’ resources and learning content in the education market. Cuskelly et al.’s (2023) study of Australian principals’ perceptions of commercialisation also shows how schools heavily relied on commercial services that provided suitable technological infrastructure, online platforms, online connection, and digital interaction.

The pandemic was therefore a unique time for how teachers carried out their work, particularly in the delivery of education. Ultimately, remote working and learning were fairly short-lived experiences for the teaching profession (particularly compared to workers in other professional sectors where remote working largely enabled continuity of work), with government-led demands pushing teachers back into the classroom, couched in discourse that face-to-face learning models were most effective for students’ education (Landis-Hanley 2022). The enduring significance and legacy of the pandemic ‘crisis’ for shaping the organisation and delivery of teachers’ work remains a research gap particularly in light of enduring workload challenges facing the profession. The final section sets out a research agenda for studying teachers’ work in a post-pandemic world, inviting debate on how changes to work from the pandemic, as a critical contemporary inflection point, may shape the organisation and delivery of teachers’ work amid an enduring teacher workload ‘problem’.

The organisation of teachers’ work post-pandemic: back to the future?

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly altered, for a relatively short period of time, how education was delivered while continuing to intensify existing workload pressures on teachers (see McDonough and Lemon 2022; Wilson et al. 2020). While the pandemic has arguably prompted an ‘unprecedented opportunity to transform education across whole systems’ (Fullan et al. 2020, 2) and the potential to reimagine the role of digital technologies in educational delivery models (Williamson et al. 2021), there has been surprisingly little theoretical or empirical investigation of sustained impacts from the pandemic, particularly in relation to how this crisis event may have augmented schools’ use of technology in education, and what the implications are for the organisation and delivery of teachers’ work. Such discussions are important given the acknowledged unsustainability around teachers’ workload demands, and the opportunities potentially afforded to reimagine ‘work’ in the light of the intensive COVID disruption. Moreover, how technology may augment the organisation and delivery of teachers’ work (particularly given the pace of EdTech and edu-business during the pandemic), and implications for addressing the teacher workload ‘problem’, remain enduring questions.

While research in education studies commonly focus on how teachers integrate or use technology within their work and pedagogy to enhance student learning (e.g. Cuban et al. 2001), less is known about how technology is reshaping teachers’ work, labour, and the delivery of education (see Selwyn et al. 2017). For example, there is a question of how (new) models of schooling that embrace blended or hybrid forms of instruction change the educational role of teachers and implications for the organisation of work. The OECD (2020, 3) has described the pandemic as ‘an opportunity for experimentation and for envisioning new models of education and new ways of using the face-to-face learning time’. Future research may consider how commercial firms are exploiting COVID-19 as a ‘business opportunity’ in the post-pandemic phase, as well as ways in which schools have more flexibly augmented their learning models and how this invariably shapes not only the organisation of teachers’ work, but implications for workload in adapting to new learning models (Williamson et al. 2020).

How learning is delivered, through the aid of technology, may have implications for the organisation of teachers’ work. The widespread conception of teaching as a face-to-face, time-bound (via generally prescribed school hours) and geographically confined profession (Steele 2018; Susskind and Susskind 2015) was tested during the pandemic. This experiment mirrored trends witnessed during COVID-19 in other (professional) sectors where flexibility in work location and time became a forced necessity (initially during lockdowns), and then an employee-led demand with views (at least from workers) that performance outcomes and employee productivity were still being effectively ‘delivered’ (McKinsey Global Institute 2023). This raises the question: to what extent has (or could) COVID fundamentally disrupt the delivery of education and enduring notions of face-to-face learning in school education? Additionally, how may this shape the organisation of teachers’ work and impact their workload? There are reports of some schools in the US switching to four-day school weeks to address teacher retention and funding issues (Ordway 2022). Some schools in Queensland, Australia, are also trialling more flexible arrangements of 4-day weeks for students, which has also been couched as a way to ‘save time’ for teachers (Barnsley 2023). New industrial provisions in Queensland also provide public school teachers with a right to ‘digitally disconnect’ outside of work hours (Armstrong 2022; Black 2023). Some New South Wales schools are also piloting changed school operating hours to ‘better support students and make it easier for working parents to manage their commitments’ (Henebery 2022; NSW Department of Education 2022).

Whether this handful of examples of changes to school hours, days or weeks are direct consequences of enhanced flexible working (to patterns, modes, locations and timing of work) evident elsewhere during COVID is unclear. However, they present early signs of departure from enduring notions of fixed time and place in the delivery of learning and potentially an indicator of greater locational and temporal flexibility that may reshape the ‘boundaries’ of teachers’ work. Beyond these few examples, there is little theoretical understanding of how trends hastened by the pandemic – regarding flexible work and technology as a facilitator of this, and implications in delivering outcomes for ‘clients’ (students, parents) – may endure in the teaching profession and implications for workload and refocusing attention on ‘core work’. Future interview-based and ethnographic studies of teachers may deliver insights about flexible work arrangements that teachers anticipate or demand, and how these are enacted in practice to support work, in addition to quantitative and observational data about impacts on student learning. ‘Where’ and ‘how’ teachers deliver their work also has implications for the regulation of work, as there are industrial consequences from new delivery models and changed work arrangements (see Queensland Teachers’ Union of Employees 2023). This may trigger discussions on how teachers’ work is (re)organised around school time or certain work hours, particularly in the light of broader discussions around a dissolution of work/life boundaries and expectations of being ‘always on’ and available (Black 2023; Cuskelly et al. 2023). Interviews with school leaders, trade union officials, and education bureaucrats could aid in understanding these issues for the management of teachers’ work and workload, particularly in work processes and workplace agreements.

In tandem with further research needed on flexible delivery models and implications for teachers’ work, there is opportunity to investigate ways that broader trends around technology, invariably hastened by the pandemic, are also restructuring teachers’ work and implications for workload; specifically, how online solutions may support a ‘refocusing’ on the ‘core work’ of teachers. Recent examples in New South Wales of such phenomena include state government policies to support lesson planning and preparation by giving teachers access to online ‘banks’ of curriculum and lesson planning materials to save teachers’ time in searching for such materials (see Carroll 2022; Stacey et al. 2023). Such initiative, driven under the former Perrottet Government’s Quality Time Programme in NSW public education, is one example of apparent ‘time-saving’ solutions for teachers to ease their workload burden (see NSW Government 2022). Yet such ‘solutions’ have been critiqued in their capacity to effectively tackle the workload problem, as argued by Creagh et al. (2023): ‘Systemic responses largely focus on targeted responses to workload, such as reducing the number of teaching hours or providing suites of lesson plans … These responses reveal a simplistic understanding of pressure points within teachers’ work.’

Such examples invite a deeper discussion of technological solutions to the teacher workload ‘problem’ and implications of this for the labour process of teachers’ work, particularly around work skill. It is often uncritically assumed that technology is positive or beneficial for teachers’ work and for students pedagogically (Cuban et al. 2001; Davidson and Turin 2021). Some perspectives assert the potential for digital technologies and artificial intelligence tools (e.g. ChatGPT) to enable teachers to work more efficiently and effectively – to reduce repetitive tasks, facilitate automation and standardisation (e.g. automatic grading, templated lessons plans, drafting emails), and ease workload burdens (e.g. Alirezabeigi et al. 2020; Harris 2023; Selwyn 2021; Will 2023), thereby allowing teachers to focus on ‘higher order’ activities like differentiation of student learning (arguably, their ‘core work’). More critical perspectives draw attention to ways that technologies may deskill teachers’ work or make their work more complex and challenging (see Newhouse 2014; Selwyn et al. 2017; Stacey et al. 2023).

This invites further discussion of how technologies not only ‘save time’ of educators, but how they are shaping the labour process of teaching and skills required. For example, one study by Selwyn et al. (2018), in the pre-COVID context, showed that while teachers felt that digital technology helped to make their work ‘more manageable’, this did not necessarily mean ‘less work’ or shorter working hours. In addition to how technology affects workload or working time, similar critical perspectives call for understanding the role of technologies in contributing to de-skilling of teachers by separating conception of teaching work from its execution, or undermining their professional autonomy (see Stacey et al. 2023). Following Acemoglu and Autor’s (2011) research on ‘skill bias’, there is merit in investigating how technological change shapes demand for certain professional skills, the nature of ‘skills’ required to complete ‘tasks’ defined in teachers’ work, and how this may shape the organisation of work for educators. Time use studies and interviews with teachers may assist for learning how and where teachers are using technologies for different aspects of their work, the nature of ‘skill’ required to carry out certain tasks, and ways they enable or hinder teachers from focusing on their ‘core work’.

Conclusion

Against the context of an already overworked profession, the COVID-19 pandemic represented a unique moment in contemporary history for examining the ways in which the organisation and delivery of work of professionals may be changing. While phenomena described in this article (e.g. flexible school weeks, online teaching resources) may not be phenomena borne necessarily or solely by the pandemic, they do reflect broader patterns of change taking place to the organisation and delivery of teachers’ work. There remains a timeliness in examining these issues and their intersection with the teacher workload ‘problem’ to understand ways to not only enhance sustainability of the teaching profession, but ensure teachers retain their professional skill, identity, autonomy and status, and are able to prioritise their focus on the education of students. Such issues are relevant not only for the context of NSW public education, but other such systems globally that are also grappling with combined pressures of teacher workload, workforce shortages, and the influence of various technologies (Thompson 2021). Future research may progress this agenda through examining changes in the organisation and delivery of teachers’ work.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr Meghan Stacey who provided feedback on an earlier version of this article.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the this project is funded through the UTS Business School Research Grant Scheme.

Notes on contributors

Mihajla Gavin

Mihajla Gavin is a Senior Lecturer in employment relations and human resource management at UTS Business School. Her interest and expertise is in the areas of gender, employee voice, education, teachers’ work, and the future of work. Recent projects have focused on teacher workload, school autonomy, deskilling, and domestic violence and work.

Susan McGrath-Champ

Susan McGrath-Champ is Professor (Honorary) in Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney Business School. Her research focuses on teachers’ work and working conditions, organisational and people management during crises, employment conditions within global production networks, and gender issues.