Volume 15 Issue 2

School lockdowns prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic has required teachers to work in a climate of rapid and significant adaptation. In this paper, which is part of a larger study, we provide a summary of the effects the COVID-19 school lockdowns in 2020 had on teacher stress. The paper outlines firstly the specific teacher stressors that existed before 2020 as well as the additional stressors that became apparent during and since the COVID-19 pandemic, as identified in scholarly literature. Secondly, the paper provides a brief overview of the responses from teachers in the 48 schools within Adventist Schools Australia (ASA) to an online survey designed to explore their workplace stressors surrounding the school lockdowns in 2020. Overall, there was a general increase in workplace stress during the COVID-19 school lockdowns, but it was not the degree that has been reported in previous literature.

An institution’s support of higher degree research (HDR) candidates engages the supervisor/s and the candidate in a professional learning and teaching relationship, described as the pedagogy of supervision (Grant, 2005; Nulty, Kiley, & Meyer, 2009). Universities develop programs to support academic and research staff to supervise postgraduate candidates while also facilitating the learning of novice researchers and HDR candidates (Carton & Kelly, 2014; Carton, O’Farrell, & Kelly, 2013; Luca et al., 2013). In this mixed methods research project questionnaires and interviews were used to determine what is valued by current and past HDR candidates of Avondale and which areas of our HDR programs need further development. This is the first of two papers that report the findings of this project.