Compulsory Transition to Remote Work: Features and Consequences (the Example of Teachers)

During the Covid-19 pandemic, teachers were forced to conduct lessons remotely, which became a significant difficulty for them. This is due to the fact that teaching in Russia is at the stage of instrumental modernization, that is, the process of introducing digital tools into the traditional approach to teaching. In addition, teachers are characterized by a violation of the balance of work and personal life due to the presence of an irregular work schedule. Studies of other occupational groups have shown that integration and permeability between work and home have increased during the pandemic. Such consequences of switching to a remote work format may also be relevant for school teachers. Moreover, in the studies of foreign authors devoted to the emergency transition of school teachers to the remote format of work, two approaches to adaptation are distinguished: avoidance and overcoming. However, such works by Russian authors have not yet been published, which also makes the problem of our work relevant. Thus, the main purpose of this study was to study how teachers adapted to the changes due to the abrupt transition to a remote work format, and what consequences this transition led to. To achieve this goal, semi-structured interviews were conducted with school teachers of grades 5-11 in Moscow and the Moscow Region. They were aimed at identifying the key aspects of the work routine of school teachers, their subjective perception of teaching, signs of work-life balance violations, peculiarities of school teachers ' adaptation to the remote format of work, as well as the emotional background during distance teaching. According to the results of the analysis, it can be said that before the pandemic, the traditional approach to teaching prevailed in the practice of teachers. Innovative technologies are used as a way to achieve the same goals as in classical teaching. The transition to a remote work format has made a large number of electronic resources available to teachers. In addition, the format of interaction with students has changed. Other key problems were the increase in the volume of work being checked and the increase in the duration of the check itself, the organization of the lesson and the involvement of students in the process. The unexpected result was that most of the informants did not use all the technologies that were used in the distance learning format after entering the full-time training format, or they were not used on a permanent basis. In addition, our analysis showed that even before the pandemic, the teaching profession was characterized by irregular work schedules and integration of work and personal life, which was also discussed in earlier studies by various authors. This confirms the data of previous studies. During the pandemic, the disruption of the work-life balance only increased, as, according to most informants, the volume of work during the pandemic increased, which also affected the length of the working day. However, this did not affect the relationship with relatives. In this paper, we also tried to identify some typology, based on the methods of conducting lessons remotely: digital type, pseudo-digital type, and mixed type. The teachers ' well-being and their emotional state in general had a negative connotation, regardless of what method of adaptation to remote work the teacher used. In addition, poor health was observed in informants who have a neutral-positive attitude to distance education.