Pandemic Pedagogy #5: teaching, learning and leadership in a time of pandemic and beyond

I reflect on how an emphasis on care has emerged as an active response to "pandemic pedagogy" through four themes that resonate within the emerging academic literature:

1. Rethinking teaching: the need to rethink traditional course content delivery due to social distancing has resulted in teachers taking on roles as designers of learning. This process has accelerated from March to December 2020 as the first and second waves of the pandemic resulted in government restrictions to work and education. Even before the pandemic, traditional transmissive teaching methods had been challenged and student-oriented approaches to teaching and learning were especially being advocated within the international scholarship of teaching and learning with students-as-partners as a good example of this model. The need to practically facilitate courses online has resulted in reimagining the role of the teacher as a “guide on the side” rather than a “sage on the stage.” In turn, this shift has amplified appreciation of learning as an iterate and recursive process that requires the support of mentors and peers as critical friends invested in good work.


2. Enhancing learning: teachers have been reconsidering how knowledge proliferation is not always conducive to effective learning and situated understanding. This pandemic has highlighted our appreciation for learning as a holistic experience. Reimagining teaching has resulted in a corresponding reimagining of learning, not just as cognitive, but as situated in a social and cultural context. In tertiary education the scholarly teacher is the disciplinary practitioner who models attitudes and dispositions in the domain of knowledge of either the discipline or professional practice. For many, this pandemic has been an opportunity to slow down and reconsider what they want their students to be able to “do” as well as “know” and this had resulted in greater appreciation of learning as a performance of understanding that is best demonstrated through enactment. This appreciation, in turn, has facilitated the imaginative space for educators to design effective opportunities to promote enhanced learning experiences that focus on learning as a process rather than a product.


3. Compassion: this pandemic has amplified the value of social connections to support mental health and wellbeing. The mounting challenges of the pandemic as a global event has meant that teachers are more aware of the socially situated lives of their students and how good learning experiences need to be supported by communities of care. To help students cope, teachers have demonstrated flexibility as many students try to figure out how to establish a new normal; teachers have demonstrated compassion for the situation that students are in and have stayed connected with them by sending check‐in emails and setting up additional office hours that has allowed teachers to stay connected with their students.


4. Leading with empathy: this pandemic has highlighted the value of empathetic leadership within the wider ecosystem of tertiary education where team leaders actively listen to their team members; where leaders are present to members of their team by checking in on their wellbeing as many continue to work remotely; where leaders create bonds with their team members and who have the capacity to demonstrate to team members that each person on the team matters as a person, not just as employee of the institution. Cultivating empathy is a leadership skill that develops bonds of trust. It offers insights into what team members are feeling and thinking and it equips leaders to better lead during a time of crisis. The ability to understand and relate to the difficult challenges team members are facing will promote the fostering of sustainable systems over time.


This pandemic has highlighted productive experiences of learning and teaching when connected by communities of care. Teaching should not be pedagogical solitude but has potential to be promoted and sustained through a community of practice approach that fosters learning enhancement for authentic social engagement and that models empathetic leadership. 



View: Stories of Care: Reflections on Teaching & Learning Online in 2020  #IUADigEd Webinar


Read: Nita Evans, “Leading with Empathy: Supporting Faculty through COVID‐19 and Beyond,” First published: 30 June 2020 https://doi.org/10.1002/dch.30336


Resource: The GoodWork Toolkit, Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education see http://www.pz.harvard.edu/projects/the-good-project 

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