Teaching and learning amidst double disaster: a case of post-traumatic events among students / Siti Zuraida Maaruf ... [et al.]

This study aims to investigate the challenges faced by these affected individuals, factors that motivate the students’ return to school following the disaster and their ways of dealing with the challenges regarding teaching and learning. The year 2020 and 2021 witnessed how the world had to deal with the unprecedented educational circumstance prompted by a global pandemic. The swift change to online learning was stressful and taxing in many ways, for both students and teachers, affecting their physical and mental health. With the combination of pandemic and natural disasters, the distress caused by these successive events may have become a hindrance to students’ deep involvement in learning and the whole teaching and learning process. The study adopted a qualitative approach using an online survey, and 409 participants were selected from stratified random sampling. A questionnaire was administered to obtain quantitative data which were analysed using descriptive statistics. Results showed that the double disaster heightened the level of stress, causing academic, behavioural, and financial pressure to increase among these students. However, financial constraint also turns out to be one of the prominent factors that restored their motivation to return to school or college. Among the dominant coping strategies employed by the students were prioritizing human interactions, positive reframing, and religious coping.