Associations of Technological, Pedagogical and Content Knowledge with Perceived Stress of Adapted Physical Educators in Europe During the COVID-19 Lockdown

Background: Many schools around the world were rapidly closed to prevent the spread of COVID-19. This led to most school-aged children reducing their levels of physical activity. Face-to-face learning opportunities were converted to remote teaching, causing issues among students with special educational needs. For teachers to deliver remote teaching competently requires enhanced technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK). This is more so with delivering adapted physical education (APE). APE teachers may not have had opportunities to learn how to use technologies for remote teaching, which leads to more stress, and may affect the high quality APE needed to keep children with special educational needs to remain physically active.

Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate the associations of perceived stress of European APE teachers with their TPACK for physical education.

Methods: A standardised survey was made available online and available in English, French, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Portuguese. Language was checked through back translation methods and distributed through national distribution lists between May-June 2020. Survey items included school type, gender and teaching experience. All items from the TPACK-21-PE were included, consisting of 48 items on a 6-point scale evaluating the teachers` knowledge in using technology for delivering physical education. There are seven subscales in TPACK-21-PE, and scores were averaged. Perceived stress was measured from a single item with a scale from 0-10 and was treated as the dependent variable in a multivariate linear regression analysis.

Results: The majority of the respondents (n=122) were female (57%), over the age of 40 (71%), and taught in mainstream schools (59%) rather than in special schools (41%). The overall mean stress score was 5.24 (SD=2.45). Technological content knowledge had the lowest score (mean=3.2, SD=1.27) and pedagogical knowledge (mean=4.3, SD=.94) was scored the highest among the teachers. The combination of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) was positively associated with perceived stress (F=2.68, p=.015). Technological knowledge (t=-2.86, p=0.005) and pedagogical content knowledge (t=-2.74, p=.008) were negatively associated with perceived stress. The associations between the other TPACK domains and stress were not statistically significant.

Discussion: The restrictions in schooling due to COVID-19 have placed a greater workload on APE teachers, as well as stress. Areas of technological knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge were negatively associated with stress. In other words, teachers with more knowledge in using technology and using pedagogical content knowledge had lower levels of stress. These findings highlight the APE teachers` stress and its moderators during COVID-19.

Conclusions: The provisions for 21st-Century skills among APE teachers to engage in technological knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge may assist with perceived work stress, and further research in these possible relationships is needed.