Changes in Teachers’ Perceptions of School Quality During COVID-19

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic brought forth unique challenges for schools, requiring a sudden shift to remote learning. However, there have been no empirical studies examining the effects of the pandemic on school quality. This study aims to address this research gap by examining teacher data from a longitudinal study ( n = 2,616 teachers in 120 schools in Germany) on various aspects of school quality. Using multiple-group multiple-indicator univariate latent change score modeling based on latent covariate propensity score balancing, we investigate whether COVID-19 impacted school quality – that is, school climate, collective teacher efficacy, teacher cooperation, and distributed leadership. With a few exceptions, we could not detect significant differences in the development of teachers’ perceptions of school quality during the pandemic compared to developments that occurred prior to the pandemic. For example, adaptive teaching increased more than before the pandemic, while social support between teachers decreased more than before the pandemic.