Too much of a good thing? Teacher performance during the COVID-19 pandemic and the ambiguous role of high teacher autonomy

The Covid-19 pandemic and the associated school closures have challenged teachers to quickly develop and implement effective distance learning concepts. This article examines the success of teachers in meeting these challenges by analysing their performance during the pandemic. Using a mixed-method approach, the study conducts a secondary data analysis of 135 questionnaires from a pupil and parent survey conducted by a German elementary school. These surveys are analysed across the three basic dimensions of teaching quality, elucidating the teaching experiences during the pandemic. The results reveal a considerable variation in teacher performance, highlighting instances where some teachers made inadequate decisions regarding the selection of teaching content or supporting strategies, while also displaying limited engagement with their students. Given the identical school conditions across the research setting for all teachers, this article focuses on individual effectiveness and efficiency of teachers during the pandemic, prompting an inquiry into the extent to which the high degree of teacher autonomy may have influenced performance. To address this further, this article introduces a framework based on current interdisciplinary research findings, which predicts a “too-much-of-a-good-thing” effect of teacher autonomy on teacher performance and integrates numerous established research approaches. This article contributes to a better insight into the performance of teachers during the pandemic and the identification of effective distance learning teaching approaches. Simultaneously, this article proposes a theoretically grounded framework for varying teacher performance, the exploration of which provides a compelling avenue for enhancing teacher performance and serves as a well-founded starting point for further research.