Abstract
This chapter aims to serve a constructive purpose from pandemic pedagogy by presenting practice-driven pedagogical strategies for online teaching and learning. Through phenomenological HelpDesk analysis from a K12 school district's Education Technology Department, their Education Technology Specialist presents an ethnographic empirical study on what advice was sought and given during emergency remote teaching of 2020. Using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM-2), it shows how teachers defaulted to practices which connected them with their students, helped them stay organized for synchronous and asynchronous instruction, and gave them “eyes on” student learning with easily accessible data. The value of this study lies in its ability to help understand the professional learning effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and provide a guide for those who need a deeper understanding of teachers' instructional choices during emergency remote education.
TopBackground
The COVID-19 pandemic is burrowing a lasting effect on education. From the COVID-19 slowdown/slide, to the impact of screen time, to home and hybrid environments for learning, it is important to explore the varied impacts and its contributing factors. The definition of pandemic pedagogy and its burgeoning influence on education will be examined. Additionally, the influence on the pandemic pedagogy by education technology (EdTech) will be explored, due to the unprecedented impacts in K12 education. Progressive promising practices for teaching in online spaces during the COVID-19 shutdown will then be investigated. Lastly, the COVID phenomenon will be tempered with the researcher’s education technology background for an ethnographic view of TAM-2 to frame how teachers’ technological pedagogical decisions over the first nine months of the COVID-19 pandemic affect the future education outlook.
Pandemic Pedagogy
A pandemic pedagogy speaks to the approaches we employ in instructional environments to foster learning in the context of a serious health crisis. Pedagogies during the COVID-19 pandemic have been referred to as “distance learning,” but embody a different definition due to the duress of the times (Bozkurt & Sharma, 2020). When face-to-face instruction quickly shifted to online learning only, ERE in K12 was deemed as “crisis instruction.” Crisis teaching, or crisis instruction, differs from the instructional practices educators had prior to COVID-19--or have adopted since; crisis teaching were the emergency remote teaching practices (ERTP) applied during the first few months of school shut-downs. By the first semester of the new school year, emergency remote education (ERE) had been accepted as this brand of distance learning. All of these trauma-informed practices are part of a pandemic pedagogy.
Hodges, Moore, Lockee, Trust, and Bond (2020) define emergency remote teaching (ERT) as a temporary shift of instructional delivery to an alternate delivery mode due to crisis circumstances, in contrast to distance learning experiences that are planned from the beginning and designed to be online. Bozkurt, Jung, et al. (2020) contrast distance education as an optional, planned activity which is grounded in theoretical and practical knowledge, while ERE is a mandatory, survival mode of education implemented in times of crisis using all the resources available, including offline and/or online tools. ERTP involve the use of fully remote teaching solutions for instruction that would otherwise be delivered face-to-face or blended, and that will return to that format once the crisis or emergency has abated.
As Zimmerman (2020) reflected, what's happening is a great online learning experiment. This is an opportunity to test online pedagogy-centric approaches. From teachers’ online instruction, students’ online learning, and parents’ online instructional support, there are many variables within each. “What is currently being done, emergency remote teaching, should be considered a temporary solution to an immediate problem” (Bozkurt & Sharma, 2020, p. ii). Thus, the distinction is important between the normal, everyday type of effective online instruction and that which we are doing in a hurry with bare minimum resources and scant time, ERE.
Key Terms in this Chapter
HelpDesk: Support that focuses on the end user and how their needs might be met.
Pandemic Pedagogy: Speaks to the approaches employed in instructional environments to foster learning in the context of a serious health crisis.
Crisis Teaching/Instruction: Teachers’ actions: whatever needs to be done, in a crisis situation, to keep students connected and engaged in the learning process—outside of planned online distance learning.
Remote Virtual Learning: Occurs when students and teachers cannot be physically present in a traditional learning environment, and all information is disseminated through a variety of digital engagement opportunities.
Education Technology: The branch of school support that deals with the instructional components of technical initiatives.
Emergency Remote Education (ERE)/Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT)/Emergency Remote Instruction (ERI): A temporary shift of instructional delivery to an alternate delivery mode due to crisis circumstances.
COVID-19: An illness caused by a virus that can spread from person-to-person, previously only found in animals, swept the globe to cause a pandemic rise in illness.
Professional Learning/Development: Professional learning plans are continuous learning offerings around organizational goals, where professional development is not seen as learning on a continuum, but continuous learning.