Original Research
Ukrainian EFL Teachers’ Coping and Resilience During the War: A Qualitative Study
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Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine has caused immense destruction and upheaval, severely disrupting the country’s education system and placing extraordinary personal and professional burdens on teachers, many of whom face trauma, displacement, and chronic stress while striving to maintain continuity of learning. In this qualitative study, we examine the responses to the war of nine tertiary-level Ukrainian English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers. Through inductive thematic analysis of their group discussions across a ten-month online professional development project, we identified six themes that cut across their perspectives on coping and resilience, which we present in this report. These are: 1) student engagement and relationships, 2) pedagogical adaptation, 3) structural and resource constraints, 4) teacher emotional and psychological experience, 5) resilience and positive coping strategies, and 6) personal and professional growth. The implications for instructors and decision-makers situated in higher education institutions in conflict/crisis areas are discussed.
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Keywords
Ukrainian EFL Teachers; Cooperative Development; Teacher Resilience; Teacher Coping Mechanisms
Author(s) Information
Publisher’s Note
The claims, arguments, and counter-arguments made in this article are exclusively those of the contributing authors. Hence, they do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of the authors’ affiliated institutions, or EUROKD as the publisher, the editors and the reviewers of the article.
Acknowledgements
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to each of the participants, who generously contributed their time, experiences, and insights during an incredibly difficult time in their lives. We are also thankful to them for granting us permission for the secondary analysis of the data incorporated into this study.
Funding
No funding was received for the secondary analysis that constituted this study.
CRediT Authorship Contribution Statement
William Pearson: Conceptualisation, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project Administration, Resources, Software, Validation, Visualization, Writing – Original Draft, Writing – Review & Editing
Nataliia Krynska: Conceptualisation, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project Administration, Resources, Software, Validation, Visualization, Writing – Original Draft, Writing – Review & Editing
Generative AI Use Disclosure Statement
Google Gemini was used to check a proof of the manuscript for errors and stylistic inappropriacies.
Ethics Declarations
World Medical Association (WMA) Declaration of Helsinki–Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Participants
This study was conducted in accordance with the British Educational Research Association’s Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research, fifth edition. Ethical approval was obtained from the Ethics Committee of the University of Exeter (Approval no. 6751215). All participants provided their voluntary, informed consent prior to the data being included in the study.
Competing Interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Data Availability
Research data supporting this publication are available as supplementary information accompanying this publication at https://doi.org/10.24378/exe.33406621