ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Mental Health and Wellbeing in Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1659431
"It's something you can't wash off; you carry it with you": a qualitative study into teachers' experiences of vicarious trauma symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic in Victoria, Australia
Provisionally accepted
- 1Institute for Safety Compensation and Recovery Research, Melbourne, Australia
- 2Monash University School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Melbourne, Australia
- 3La Trobe University School of Allied Health Human Services and Sport, Melbourne, Australia
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Background: The COVID-19 pandemic caused unprecedented disruption to education systems worldwide, and exacerbated existing challenges in the teaching profession. The dual demands of academic instruction and pastoral care placed a considerable amount of emotional burden on teachers, compounded by increased exposure to the traumatic experiences of students. This heightened risk of vicarious trauma among teachers has been underexplored, particularly in the context of Victoria, Australia, where one of the world's longest government-mandated lockdowns was implemented. Methods: This study builds on previous research by examining how teachers' roles and responsibilities informally evolved in response to external pressures during the pandemic. Drawing on interview and focus group data from 25 educators in public and private schools across Victoria in 2022, the findings were coded via NVIVO software version 12 and thematically analysed. Results: Findings suggest that roles of educators evolved during the pandemic as their responsibilities expanded beyond academic instruction to include more pastoral care for students. This, in turn, disclosed different pathways through which educators were exposed to traumatic content from their students, families and other educators. As a result, many participants felt vicarious trauma symptoms, which is explored as various negative emotions. Conclusion: This study highlights the risk of vicarious trauma becoming an issue within the teaching profession. It underscores the need for further research to understand how vicarious trauma is affecting the teaching profession.
Keywords: burnout, COVID-19 pandemic, secondary traumatic stress, teachers, vicarious trauma
Received: 04 Jul 2025; Accepted: 29 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Crivari, Oxford, Schroder, Anderson and Mcmillan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Olivia Crivari, olivia.crivari@monash.edu
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