Supporting grieving students amidst COVID-19: Emotion- and problem-focused coping strategies of teachers who supported grieving children during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the need to explore individuals' coping with grief. Childhood bereavement is estimated at more than 1.5 million children around the world who lost a caregiver during the pandemic. Although 70% of teachers report having grieving children (GC) in their classroom, most studies examined psychologists' roles in supporting GC, whereas research into teachers' coping lags far behind. Furthermore, little is known about teachers' coping specifically during the COVID-19 pandemic, that involved distance teaching and challenged teacher-student communication. The study's goal was to examine how teachers' coping strategies are manifested when supporting GC, using the framework of Lazarus and Folkman's transactional theory of stress and coping. Employing a qualitative approach, 15 teachers were interviewed about their experiences and coping strategies. Content analysis revealed that teachers struggle within three arenas (intrapersonal- within themselves, interpersonal vis-à-vis the student, interpersonal vis-à-vis the classmates), within which they employ both emotion- and problem-focused coping strategies. The study's significance lies in the premise that improving our understanding of teachers’ coping might shed light on how to optimally attend to teachers' needs. The study may promote policy changes that may improve the design of teacher training as well as enhance our theoretical understanding of a topic that has received surprisingly little attention in research.