Management of technostress in teachers as occupational risk in the context of COVID19

The integration of new technologies in schools and high schools are linked to new problems with the use and management of ITC tools as technostress between teachers. Technostress is associated with several negative effects on workers’ health as anxiety, musculoskeletal disorders, headache, mental and physical fatigue. Due to the worldwide COVID19 pandemic, the majority of schools blocked out, and face to face courses were transformed into online courses in a very short time. In these circumstances, several teachers were forced to increase their skills with ICT technology to accomplish their teaching objectives, and their technological workload was higher than at the beginning of the course. In the current research, the technostress of teachers was evaluated based on a validated questionnaire. Results pointed out that occupational risks linked to technostress were high during the pandemic period. Older teachers showed more vulnerability to the risk, because a lack of training and adaptation of some of the new tools for online courses, while women showed higher levels of anxiety and emotional tension. Prevention measures as specific training programs for ICT, rational use of ICT, and a more balanced distribution of work and family life at home should be developed to address the problem.


Introduction
The adoption of Information and communication technologies in Schools and High Schools are linked to some emerging problems as technostress between teachers. The problem is increasing fast in many developed countries. In a previous research developed in South Korea [1], different factors that act as creators of techno-stress were studied, such as techno-insecurity, techno-overload, or techno-complexity. Trying to define the frontier from which new technologies become a source of techno-stress has been carried out in countries like Finland [2]. In a similar study carried out in Malaysia [3], the results showed that many teachers are overwhelmed by the high demand for tasks related to ICTs, seeing their working hours prolonged with the completion of numerous updates of information for students and administrative tasks, from their own home. Aligned with this previous studies, work overload was demonstrated as a strong precursor of techno-stress in the study carried out in Indonesia [4].
Due to the worldwide COVID19 pandemic, the majority of schools blocked out, and face to face courses were transformed into online courses in a very short time. In these circumstances, several teachers were forced to increase their skills with ICT technology to accomplish their teaching objectives, and their technological workload was higher than at the beginning of the course. Then it is important to know the impact of cited unexpected circumstances in teachers. According to that, the aim of this research is to measure the technostress in a group of selected teachers.

Material and Methods
Publisher's Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. In order to measure the technostress levels of Spanish teachers in a context of COVID19 circumstances, a group of expert teachers was selected following the staticized group methodology [5]. This methodology is similar to DELPHI method and it has been successfully applied in previous research [6], [7]. The first step is to identify potential expert. Secondly, select them according to expertise requirements based on professional achievements. Then interview experts, and finally collect and analyzes their answers and report the results.
For current research, 11 teachers were selected as member of the expert panel. All of them achieved more than 10 years of experience, and they have Master Degree or a Ph.D.
They answered the questions included in a validated questionnaire [8].

Results and discussion
The experts' results were obtained after they answered the questions showed in Table  1.  In table 2  Majority of experts answered feel exhausted when they finish their work with ICT, and they found difficult to relax after a working day using them. In spite of their efforts, many of them are very often unsure of finish their tasks properly. They often feel tense and anxious when working technologies. Older panelist showed in general more doubts about their skills with ICT, and they often feel uncomfortable, irritable and impatient. These symptoms can be a signal of mental disease as depression. In this sense, the relation between teachers technostress and depression has been demonstrated previous authors [9]. Other problems as lack of autonomy in their tasks, or poor family balance, are linked to technostress too, especially, in distance online teaching courses [10].

Conclusions
According to the results, it is necessary to create strategies for an adequate management of teaching techno-stress, in COVID19 circumstances. The importance of an adequate management of the prevention of occupational risks becomes especially important in this psychosocial risk. In this sense, the involvement of educational organizations to implement preventive measures and the quality of teaching is key. Prevention measures as specific training programs for ICT, rational use of ICT, and a more balanced distribution of work and family life at home should be developed to address the problem.
Conflicts of Interest: "The authors declare no conflict of interest."