Hacettepe Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi 2536-4758 Hacettepe University 10.16986/hunefd.1706023 Educational Technology and Computing Teacher and Student Wellbeing Eğitim Teknolojisi ve Bilgi İşlem Öğretmen ve Öğrenci Refahı COVID-19 Pandemisi Sürecinde Uzaktan Eğitim ve Öğretmenlerin İş Tatmini: İş-Aile Çatışmasının Aracı Rolü Distance Education and Teachers’ Job Satisfaction during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Mediating Role of Work-Family Conflict https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6175-5381 Görmüş Ayhan NAMIK KEMAL ÜNİVERSİTESİ, İKTİSADİ VE İDARİ BİLİMLER FAKÜLTESİ, ÇALIŞMA EKONOMİSİ VE ENDÜSTRİ İLİŞKİLERİ BÖLÜMÜ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7601-1916 Baytur Meryem Tekirdağ Büyükşehir Belediyesi 04 30 2026 41 2 285 300 05 25 2025 10 06 2025 Copyright © 1986, 1986

Conventional school education mandatorily switched to distance education to sustain education and protect the health of students and teachers during the COVID-19 lockdown around the world. However, mandatory distance education, a sort of home-based telework, is highly likely to get more blurred the borders devoted to working and family domains and trigger the work-family conflicts experienced by teachers and reduce their job satisfaction. Although previous studies addressed the relationships between distance education and job satisfaction, there is a limited study on the effect of the COVID-19 lockdown on the relationship between these three variables. The current study aims to explore the mediating role of work-family conflict in the association between distance education and teachers’ job satisfaction by using data collected from Turkish teachers working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results found that although mandatory distance education increased their job satisfaction since it allows them to maintain teaching activities under the COVID-19 circumstances, work-family conflict negatively mediated the link between mandatory distance education and teachers’ job satisfaction.

Conventional school education mandatorily switched to distance education to sustain education and protect the health of students and teachers during the COVID-19 lockdown around the world. However, mandatory distance education, a sort of home-based telework, is highly likely to get more blurred the borders devoted to working and family domains and trigger the work-family conflicts experienced by teachers and reduce their job satisfaction. Although previous studies addressed the relationships between distance education and job satisfaction, there is a limited study on the effect of the COVID-19 lockdown on the relationship between these three variables. The current study aims to explore the mediating role of work-family conflict in the association between distance education and teachers’ job satisfaction by using data collected from Turkish teachers working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results found that although mandatory distance education increased their job satisfaction since it allows them to maintain teaching activities under the COVID-19 circumstances, work-family conflict negatively mediated the link between mandatory distance education and teachers’ job satisfaction.

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