Unequal Occupational Conditions When Work Turns Digital: The Case of Schoolteachers

Digital Surveillance and Being “on Display”

Digital surveillance of work is a key concern among researchers investigating the broader shift to at-home work, especially among those in jobs that involve customer service.^24,25 Our study found that teachers expressed a strong concern about surveillance. However, this concern was not related to formal digital scrutiny of their work by school administrators, as we might have expected. Instead, teachers referred emphatically and frequently in interviews to the problem in digital teaching of being under surveillance by parents and digital display to students. By parental surveillance, teachers were referring to the presence of parents and other guardians physically in the room with the online students during their lessons and the ways that this presence influenced their ability to teach effectively. Teachers described parents putting pressure on students to get the “right” answers and to perform in certain ways during class time, which they felt reduced student opportunities for constructive learning by taking chances and making mistakes. Teachers also experienced parents in the room offering “corrections” to what teachers were presenting, which undermined their ability to teach.

I always had to be prepared in a totally different way. Because parents were often watching me, which is something that doesn't happen when I'm at school. (Heather, FG1)

Teachers found that sometimes both they and students were sometimes under digital surveillance. Parents attempted to supervise their children remotely, which led to parental viewing and recording of teachers as well. In the following case, a student was being monitored by parents via a wall-mounted camera:

I had an issue with recording of the online classroom … It was a camera on the wall behind the student directed over their shoulder at the screen. (Jen, FG3)

Another dimension of surveillance related to online harassment, such as when students record and share unflattering images of their teachers. ²⁶ Teachers described being video recorded by students during class time and that unbecoming recordings of them were distributed without their permission. In these situations, teachers found themselves vulnerable to “being on display” while not being able to control who saw them and how.

I just didn't like being on display … you never know if a student's taking a picture of you while you're teaching and then … photoshopping the picture and then sending it to their friends. … Like that was always kind of in the background. (Kimberley, FG2)

In all, teachers identified surveillance as a new condition of online teaching work, but their concerns were not about control of their work by school administrators. Rather, their concerns were about surveillance of their classrooms by parents and other guardians as well as online harassment.

Technostress

Technostress was another area where the experiences of teachers diverged from the usual literature on this topic. Technostress literature describes the often unpaid and extra time, as well as psychological stress, associated with navigating work through electronic and internet media. ²⁷ Teachers did experience technostress in their work, describing challenges with technical and internet connection issues while teaching. For example, teaching a lesson only to later realize that they had been disconnected. However, we found that teachers’ technostress was experienced mainly in relation to student problems with digital connections, rather than their own problems. That is, teachers were largely able to solve their own connectivity issues, and it was the connectivity issues of students that they experienced as more stressful and disruptive. Teachers described the time and effort it took to help students learn new interfaces or programs needed for lessons. A single student's challenges could hold up an entire class for an hour. Other aspects of student-related technostress experienced by teachers were disruptions in internet connectivity experienced by students and student equipment failures, the latter of which meant periods of time away from the lesson until new equipment was obtained by the student.

The school does provide laptops. But … some students … might not take care of their laptops as well as others. So … their laptop might break in the middle of the school year. And that's totally understandable [but] it's hard to give extra laptops … Certain kids have … iPads to draw while other kids don't. So, it's always that … inequity in digital access and what they have at home, what they don't have. (Cecelia, FG4)

In sum, teachers identified technostress as a key problem in their digital teaching work. However, the stress was not related to their own digital interfaces, but rather with supporting students’ difficulties navigating digital interfaces and internet connectivity challenges.

Loss of Control Over Teaching Environment

A third area where online teaching diverted from classroom teaching was in relation to loss of control over the teaching environment. In a physical classroom, teachers have control over the physical environment in that they can, to some extent, address distractions that might hinder students’ ability to learn and concentrate. For instance, in-class teachers can manage distractions related to noise (eg, by closing windows, asking students to be quiet) and who is in the room (eg, by not allowing extra people to enter the room).

When students were attending class from their homes, teachers experienced a loss of control over the classroom environment. They described students trying to write tests with loud household radio noise in the background. Students were in rooms with televisions on and computer games running concurrently. Teachers had to contend with the noises and needs of pets and family members at home distracting their students when they needed them to concentrate on the lesson:

They might get distracted by the pets or household objects around them. Or it could even be simple things as stationaries and supplies. … I found that quite challenging. (Lakshmi, FG 5)

When teachers were online, they were unable to support the physical condition of students, which challenged their work as educators. Teachers in in-person classes had access to breakfast programs, which are a growing feature in schools internationally and are credited with helping undernourished students to learn.^28–30 Students who are not hungry make a difference to teachers’ work lives as they are more able to concentrate and participate in their learning and can better self regulate. For online students in low-income homes, teachers found themselves in suboptimal teaching situation during the COVID-19 lockdown period. For instance, noting that it was “a little bit difficult for those kids to learn” when the students could not access the nutrition and breakfast program that had been provided at the school.

In all, teachers experienced a loss of control over the classroom when teaching online. They faced challenges of distractions in student homes and were not able to support students by, for instance, providing them with breakfast.

Difficult Student Engagement Work

A fourth challenge for online teaching was difficult student engagement work. Engaging students who are disengaged or distracted is a routine requirement for regular teachers, who are trained to cater to different learning styles of students. ³¹ In our study, teachers noted that a key difference between in-class and online teaching was the ability to visibly see their students and gauge their body language. If student body language suggested to the teacher that the lesson was not effective for them, then the teacher could shift strategies to engage the student more effectively. However, this visibility was not available to online teachers, and this created more work for them. Even when all audio–video equipment was working, teachers felt they were blinded from observing students in the classroom and this affected their ability to work effectively.

When it's in a class setting, a group setting … it's much harder for the students to … reach out for help from you. Whereas in a class, even if they don't want to raise their hand in front of everybody, when … you're circulating the room, you can see they haven't even started Question One, so, you're like, ‘Okay, I'm going to walk over and I'm going to help them’. Online, I have no idea what they're doing. ‘Are they doing their homework?’ Or are they just sitting there with a blank stare, they have no idea what to do. (Brittany, FG 6)

A further challenge was teachers experiencing students across silent, black screens. Teachers regularly described relatively implausible student claims that their cameras or mics were not working. In these cases, students were choosing to disengage from class and became very remote to teachers. All of this created extra work and stress for teachers.

In all, teachers faced unique challenges with engaging students in synchronous classrooms. This medium made it very difficult to achieve their usual teaching strategies of catering to different learning needs which, in turn, increased their work complexity.

Moral Discomfort

Finally, we found that online teachers faced new and unwanted psychological and physical occupational exposures. Moral discomfort mostly related to teachers excessive viewing online of private student environments, such as seeing students in bed during the lesson, and being exposed to scanty attire not only of the students but also others in the room. For instance, teachers described exposure to scantily clad students and parents:

They [students] would be … flopping around their bedrooms. I did have a child who had no[trousers] on one day. Mothers sometimes leaning in, and they were just in their bra. (Heather, FG1)

Conceptual Findings

It was expected that this study may reveal teachers experiencing technostress, because the hassle of managing software and internet connectivity problems in online work are well known. ²⁷ This type of stress has been shown to lead to emotional exhaustion, role overload, job-related anxiety and depression. ³³ Studies have found that technostress is particularly problematic in roles that are human facing and in any role where workers would rather engage in the client engagement work rather than spend unrecognized time fixing frustrating IT problems.^34,35 What we did not expect in this study was to identify a new dimension of technostress, that we call “extended technostress.” To date, technostress has been largely conceptualized as the difficult relationship between an individual and technology. ⁹ Our study identified a further aspect of technostress in the stress of managing the connectivity and software management of clients/students. That is, rather than experiencing stress related to their own online setup, the “extended technostress” occurs among workers because of the need to interact with and support clients as they struggle with their own poor set up or new technologies. A practical implication of this finding is that, to manage extended technostress, work organizations should consider developing technology support structures that consider not only the workers’ techno-needs but also the related needs of their clients.

A second expected finding area of this study was related to digital surveillance. Advances in digital tracking technologies have enabled close supervision of routine work including keystroke monitoring, webcam or video recording, and screen grabs. ³⁷ Interestingly, this type of monitoring was not an issue for most teachers in our study. Teachers seemed unaware of any administrative digital tracking of their work, for instance by their principal or school board, and it was not a preoccupation for them. However, it is likely that their online classrooms were monitored and tracked. For instance, most reported having to sign into Google Classroom to teach, and this software records key interactions.^38,39 Google Workspace Administrators can see usage trends and monitor classroom activity in schools. This likely digital tracking of teachers’ work is a key difference in privacy conditions between in-person and online teaching. Canadian workplace privacy laws vary by province and whether the workplace is federally regulated. Workers’ privacy protection is limited and rests mostly on requiring employee consent. ⁴⁰ Protections for workers in the United States are similar. ⁴¹ To manage teachers’ privacy rights, unions need to integrate into collective agreements conditions for what online classroom information is gathered (and by whom) and what is done with this information.

While teachers in our study appeared to be unaware of, or unconcerned about, school administrator surveillance of their work, of conceptual interest to us was that they repeatedly raised the issue of their discomfort with a different type of scrutiny: surveillance of their classroom by parents. With online synchronous teaching, parents lurked in the background and teachers were frustrated with how they interfered with their lessons. Surveillance of work by clients has been found in studies of digital platform work, where users of services rate the performance of the platform workers; for instance, Uber passengers rating their drivers. ⁴² However, we have not seen research on job surveillance by a party one step removed from the client, as in the parent of the child being taught by the teacher. Going forward, schools should update their policies to clarify the role of parents in digital classrooms and communicate it to their school communities. For instance, schools should provide parents/ caregivers with grade-appropriate guidelines on how to support their child with online lessons.

Hassles and Stressors

Other findings in our study relate to unique hassles and stressors associated with synchronous online teaching that were not present for in-person instruction. Teachers struggled to preserve classroom control, maintain student engagement, and contend with moral discomfort related to uncomfortable home exposures. Each of these required extra work and engagement by teachers.

Privacy and control of one's own work environment is a particular challenge when working from a family home. Remote workers may lack a quiet office; for instance, they may work from a kitchen table and have family members in the background. Background noise can be difficult to manage and stressful for workers. ⁴³ Raised family voices, radios, and crying babies are examples of distractions that would not be present in the immediacy of a physical office or classroom. Indeed, we note consultants are advertising their services related to “strategies for managing noise while working from home.” ⁴⁴ In Canada, where provincial governments are responsible for education, Ministries of Education should develop contextually appropriate guidance for school boards on how students and teachers can minimize off-line disruptions in online classrooms.

The moral discomfort of being exposed to uncomfortable sounds and sights inside students’ homes, such as seeing students or family members in states of undress, was a problem for teachers. Exposure to socially uncomfortable environments is a known occupational exposure in other professions where workers physically enter client homes. For instance, rude treatment and fear of relatives prompted moral distress among American and German home care workers.^45,46 However, this exposure was not a usual part of teaching work. Additionally, teachers’ remote access into student homes created situations of moral conflict. A recent study of teachers in Sweden found that moral conflict in teachers was related to their awareness of the conflict between the obligation to act and their moral awareness of the possibility of doing harm. ⁴⁷ Indeed, in Canada and other jurisdictions, teachers have a legal obligation to report child neglect or abuse.^32,48 However, the student home behavior that teachers witness online may be ambiguous, raising questions of what a teacher needs to see before they have a formal duty to report. The digital window into students’ homes, together with teachers’ obligations to report child neglect or abuse, exposes online teachers to occupational stressors that are different from what would occur for in-person teaching. As teacher education and training evolves to better include online teaching, teacher education should identify and address particular aspects of moral distress that occur when online.

Student engagement became a particularly problematic aspect of teachers’ online teaching work, requiring extra time and new strategies. In our study, teachers required new tactics to entice students to keep their online cameras and mics on. They were uncertain about how to navigate student claims that their cameras were malfunctioning, and they lacked skills to motivate these very distracted students to engage with lessons. The extra teaching skills and effort of online teaching are becoming recognized in that providers are now offering microcredentials specifically designed for online teaching. ⁴⁹ A recent systematic review of online K-12 teaching in the United States described the need to create meaningful student engagement with virtual field trips, industry-experts as guest speakers, virtual mentors for students, and discussion boards. ⁵⁰ Outside of the teaching sector, problems connecting with clients also occurred in the realm of psychological counseling. For instance, psychotherapists have struggled with the quality of interaction with their online clients due to difficulty with empathetic connection and therapist and patient distractions. ⁵¹

While this study was focused on synchronous online teaching, it is important to note that postpandemic teaching includes asynchronous courses (eg, prerecorded material) as well as courses that are a blend of synchronous and asynchronous. For example, a study of Hong Kong teachers ⁵² describes how they used asynchronous instructional resources to manage and create learning materials for students so that students could engage the materials flexibly. They also used synchronous technologies for real-time interaction and regular communication between students and teachers. It is likely that future teaching will use a variety of different media and technologies, depending on the specific classroom need.

Despite various online teaching formats, it is evident that teaching skills for in-person contact do not automatically translate into online skills, and that the occupational health exposures for in-person and online work are not the same. Others have noted that, given the significant task differences between in-person and online teaching, specific training is needed. ⁵³ However, we have not seen any studies address the different occupational health conditions of in-person versus online work. We expect that teachers’ job contracts and collective agreements may start to distinguish between in-person and online teaching and consider the different risks. These contracts should address online digital harassment and moral discomfort, online surveillance, and technical supports for teachers and students. They should also address specific training for online teaching.

Study Strengths, Limitations, and Suggestions for Future Research

A strength of this study is the richness of the qualitative data, which allowed for analytic insights about contexts of online teaching work. A key limitation of this study is that most of our data about online teaching is based on teacher's experience during COVID lockdowns. Going forward, studies should be conducted about nonemergency contexts to clarify issues related to the teaching medium. A further limitation is that we did not measure the degree of teacher stress related to online work. Future studies might compare teacher stress related to online and in-person work. Other future studies might investigate what we called “extended technostress.” When a work process is derailed because clients or students (rather than the teachers themselves) face connectivity or software problems, how is teacher stress affected, and how can these conditions be improved? Digital management and surveillance of teachers also merit further attention. How does Google Classroom track teachers, who can access that information, and how is tracking information used? How can educators use parents’ interest in being present to enhance the classroom? Finally, more research is needed on the occupational health conditions of jobs that involve significant social interaction to understand differences in in-person versus online work, and when the online is synchronous versus asynchronous.