Lessons in air-raid shelters and a sense of purpose from comforting others: LMU graduate Iryna Nadyukova investigated the psychological stress of teachers in Ukraine.

Iryna Nadyukova actually had other plans for her master’s thesis. She wanted to compare teacher-pupil interactions at German and Ukrainian schools. As recently as 23 February 2022, she sat down with Professor Anne Frenzel from the Munich Center of the Learning Sciences to discuss her research topic in the latter’s office at LMU’s Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences.

But overnight everything changed. As Russian tanks rolled toward Kyiv, research was the last thing on her mind. Nadyukova was “very shocked,” she recalls. In response, she organized an aid initiative in her faculty, ensuring that several fully loaded trucks reached Ukraine. She also volunteered to provide psychological support to refugees and helped Ukrainian children learn German in a project by the NGO “Lern-Fair.”

In August 2022, she decided to change the focus of her master’s dissertation and address other, urgent questions: What was afflicting teachers in war-torn Ukraine? How much stress were they suffering? How did they help themselves? And: How could they be helped? Although her supervisor Anna Frenzel needed no convincing of the relevance of the topic, she doubted whether it would be possible to collect the necessary data. Didn’t teachers in war zones have better things to do than answer the questions of researchers?

State of emergency: first pandemic, then war

As was soon demonstrated, however, the digital networks of Ukrainian teachers are strong. While German teachers tend to see themselves as solo operators, explains Frenzel, their colleagues in Ukraine band together in mutual exchange. For Nadyukova, it was not difficult to assemble a representative sample group of more than 700 teachers who were willing to answer a questionnaire with both closed and open-ended questions.

The results of the study, which has since been published in the journal Teaching and Teacher Education, leave no doubt that the teachers are experiencing much more stress during the war than they did, for example, during the pandemic – that other “terrible disruption,” in Frenzel’s words, which immediately preceded the invasion of Russian troops three years ago. During the pandemic, Ukrainian schools had already made the switch from in-person to online lessons. Classes were split. Some children scarcely saw the inside of their school anymore. Since 24 February 2022, this has not changed.

If a school does not have an air-raid shelter, then lessons take place online. If there is not enough room for everyone in the shelter, classes are taught in the mornings and afternoons in separate groups. When a siren goes off, teachers and pupils dash to the air-raid shelter. Little teaching and learning generally takes place there – it is simply too full and too loud.

But sometimes it is possible to continue lessons in the air-raid shelter, as one teacher related to Nadyukova – albeit with the utmost effort. “We could hear explosions outside. I told the children our soldiers were intercepting rockets, that everything was OK. Inside I was trembling, because I had no idea what was really going on out there.”

Finding comfort in giving comfort

Frenzel finds the statements from teachers in the war-ravaged country “very moving.” She is particularly impressed by the strength that many educators draw from interacting with their pupils. “The responsibility for their charges, who trust their teachers, becomes an emotional resource,” she observes. Certainly, it is stressful for teachers to sit in a bunker with crying schoolchildren during an air-raid alarm, and to have no answer when children ask if their parents are still alive – especially as they often do not know how their own loved-ones are doing. But they explain nonetheless how fulfilling and soothing it is to hug the children and comfort them and tell them everything will be all right.

“From the findings of the study, one can derive practical implications for one's own emotion regulation,” explains Frenzel. Instead of focusing on the stresses and strains one is suffering, one should try to see the situation from a different perspective in order to discover the meaning in one’s actions. “The data shows how helpful it can be to direct one’s attention to the meaningfulness of one’s own activity. In psychology, this is known as reappraisal.”

Nadyukova was also deeply moved by the personal stories she collected. “Moreover, they motivated me to do further research. Because I wanted to give these teachers a voice. So that their experiences are heard, seen, and understood.” Many teachers, she remarks, are fortified by their sense of duty – and the enjoyment they get from working with children. “The children count on them – that strengthens and supports them and helps them to go on.”

She has since returned to her native Lviv. Years ago, she left the city in western Ukraine to study at New York University. Subsequently, she spent several years in Abu Dhabi, at a research laboratory belonging to the university, to work on the topic of teaching, learning, and development. She came to the Munich Center of the Learning Sciences at LMU because she was fascinated by learning more about innovative approaches to teaching and learning and discovering how to improve them.

Mindfulness to avoid burnout

Nadyukova currently works as Education Project Coordinator at the Norwegian Refugee Council in Ukraine. Her project involves training teachers to de-stress and help themselves and their pupils as effectively as possible. It consumes an awful lot of energy to suppress feelings, she explains, and leads to burnout in the long run. “After three years of all-out war, we see that very often.”

She tries to address this problem with her work. “We explain what stress is, how it affects body and mind, and how we can cope with it.” Among the tools she imparts are various easy-to-learn breathing exercises; picturing a safe space to which one can retreat in one’s imagination when the world outside gets out of control; and mindfulness exercises. In addition, the teachers learn to help children deal with stress – for example, by incorporating little breathing or gymnastic exercises into class for the purposes of relaxation.

When it comes to coping with all the stress that Nadyukova herself faces in her work, her training as a meditation and mindfulness coach helps. “Many studies show that meditation and breathing exercises change brain functions and improve concentration and emotional regulation skills.” How her own life will pan out over the coming years depends not least on the fate of Ukraine. But one thing is certain: “For years after the end of the war, teachers will need help to recover emotionally,” notes Frenzel.