Abstract
The long-term worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented disruptions to regular school operations around the world, and online education has become the temporary solution from primary to higher education. Since 2020, researchers have learned that this situation has instigated various challenges to teachers, who have been on the front line fighting to continue education. However, there is not yet a global investigation from which to derive generalizable solutions that could contribute to ensuring educational continuity during school closures. Consequently, this chapter investigated the challenges teachers have faced during the pandemic by analyzing research studies from around the world. Using the method of literature review and the framework of thematic analysis, the authors identified practical solutions based on firsthand insights from 15,054 teachers. The chapter summarized eight types of major challenges to teachers in three broad categories and presented three recommendations for a more crisis-prepared education community.
TopIntroduction
The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the need to develop strategies to protect education continuity. Since the declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic by the World Health Organization in March 2020, many educational institutions around the world have closed for various periods. In 2020, more than 1.5 billion students were affected by school closures due to COVID-19 outbreaks (UNESCO, 2021). Countries have applied different tactics in their attempts to manage the situation given their different social, economic, political, and educational considerations (Ansu-Kyeremeh & Goosen, 2022; Baekkeskov, 2020; Brierley & Larcher, 2020; Cohen & Kupferschmidt, 2020; Garcia, 2020; Viner et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2020). These considerations influence the decision-making regarding whether, when, and how to maintain education continuity if schools must be closed.
Concerns about students’ well-being are also associated with the closure of schools. These concerns include lack of self-regulation, learning loss, economic effects, nutrition and immunizations, household living situations, social disconnect, limited entertainment, and mental health (Baekkeskov, 2020; Garcia & Revano, 2022; Laila & Rahman, 2020; Remme, 2020; Spaull & van der Berg, 2020). In terms of mental health, research shows that students experienced anxiety and fear (Tong et al., 2020), loneliness (Lampou, 2020), and worried about learning needs, the demands of daily life, and the need for social support (Tong et al., 2020). Other concerns include students’ reduced opportunities for tertiary education and consequent lower income when they reach working age (Fernald et al., 2021).
Public support for school closures has differed around the world, with different government responses to COVID-19 and the length of school closure, among other things. Research in Germany (Juhl et al., 2020) shows that public support for school closures declined after two weeks due to decreased household income and the increased burden of homeschooling. The impact of school closures has been experienced unequally based on gender; women have carried most of the burden of childcare and increased tasks induced by children’s learning from home (Adams, 2020; Profeta, 2020). Students from more vulnerable backgrounds have experienced additional challenges, such as long-term educational disengagement, digital exclusion, poor technology management, and increased psychosocial challenges (Drane et al., 2020; Sia & Adamu, 2020). Furthermore, schools have faced resource shortages in terms of teacher training and curriculum design for teaching online (Sia & Adamu, 2020); equipment requirements, and the provision of technical support to students (Sia & Adamu, 2020; Silumba & Chibango, 2020); schools’ responsiveness, effectiveness, and efficiency of education delivery (Sia & Adamu, 2020), and conducive learning space (Lamsal, 2022).
When schools are closed, online teaching and learning become a practical means of maintaining educational continuity. Online learning comprises internet-based courses offered synchronously and/or asynchronously. Murphy et al. (2011) clarified the differences between synchronous and asynchronous online teaching. In synchronous online teaching, the teacher and students work at the same time on the same online platform, although they may be physically far away from one another. Synchronous online teaching resources might include online conferences, instant messages, computer programs, or other applications working on a personal device such as a computer or smartphone that allow live, direct, and temporal interactions among the participants. In asynchronous online teaching, the teacher prepares or assigns online learning materials, such as recorded videos, and students work on these materials with the guidance of the teacher. In this mode of learning, students work independently at their own pace and in their own time and space with their devices (Drijvers et al., 2021; Erdoğan & Yazıcı, 2022; Jaekel et al., 2021; Müller & Goldenberg, 2021; Rasmitadila et al., 2020; Taimur et al., 2021; Wu, 2021). Depending on the development of the pandemic, some regions of the world experienced numerous on-and-off lockdowns (Litchfield et al., 2021; Mercer, 2021) and teachers had to shift frequently between face-to-face school operation and online teaching and learning.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Soft Skills: Personal characteristics and traits that are preferable for an employment environment in which individuals work with others to achieve organizational goals.
Blended Online Teaching and Learning: A pedagogical method that involves both face-to-face classroom operation and internet-based teaching and learning.
Differentiation: Pedagogical arrangements that suit an individual’s special needs for learning.
COVID-19: Coronavirus disease 2019, a contagious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).
Pedagogy: Methods of structured teaching that involve teachers, students, learning content, resources, and curricular aims.
Contingency Planning: A process that creates a flexible plan for unpredictable disasters to maintain an organization’s goals.
Educational Continuity: Maintaining structured student education by providing alternative means and resources of teaching and learning following a disaster.
Burnout: A physical and mental state in which a person experiences difficulty maintaining their usual duties, possibly caused by overworking, exhaustion, and frustration.
Digital Literacy: An individual’s ability to understand, create, and manage different forms of digital information by working with various types of computerized platforms and instruments to communicate with others and conduct certain tasks.