Perceived academic stress during a pandemic: Mediating role of coping strategies

Positive mental health of Latin American university professors: A scientific framework for intervention and improvement

The post-pandemic stage covid-19 has revealed overloads, ambiguities, and conflicts of teachers in the performance of new roles in hybrid classrooms that demanded an urgent adaptation, this highlighted the need for priority attention to the mental health of teachers, however, there are still insufficient studies that transcend the diagnosis and are committed to establish proposals for improvement. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to establish a proposal for the promotion of positive mental health (PMH). METHODS: The study was deployed from a qualitative approach; using an ethnomethodological design that allowed studying how teachers create meanings and sense in their work context, an appreciative interview was conducted with an affirmative theme that allowed teachers to expose their experiences that were systematized and processed with ATLAS. ti software. The application of the interview was conducted online through a Google form, during the months of February and March 2023. Three hundred university professors who experienced the pandemic in universities in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru participated, based on a convenience sampling. RESULTS: The results of the deductive phase confirmed Lluch's PMH theoretical framework; however, new nuances or variations have been identified, which must be considered in the complex and dynamic nature of each PMH factor. From there, the results of the inductive phase allowed revealing emerging concepts, that is, new categories that would have the function of improving the PMH factors, which is why they have been denominated: dynamizing nuclei. PMH dynamizing nuclei are adjustment to work environment, soft skills, work-family balance, self-motivation, self-efficacy, subjective well-being, proactive strategies, engagement, resilience. CONCLUSIONS: Finally, with the results of both phases, the creation of an integrated model was generated, which was evaluated by six experts in a round of feedback, who highlighted the relevance of the findings and offered recommendations that were considered in the study. The new integrated model has revealed an interesting association, since it not only legitimizes the PMH's dynamizing cores, but also informs on which specific factor of the PMH these cores have the greatest impact, which has a high guiding value for intervention and improvement based on focused strategies.