Abstract
COVID-19 has exposed the inequalities and polarisation of South African communities and institutions of higher learning on the continuum of privilege. As nine social work educators, we share our reflections on how we traversed the higher education space during the beginning of the pandemic, using an autoethnography lens, with the pedagogy of discomfort and critical social work theory as the threads in the complex tapestry of our stories. We describe our orientations as social work educators, the successes, challenges, and recommendations on reimagining and reframing learning and teaching in relation to student-institutional relationships, boundaries and support.
Highlights
Collaboration, support and the development of a community of practice are essential and meaningful in finding hope during a period of disaster such as the COVID-19 pandemic
We identified the pedagogy of discomfort (Zembylas & McGlynn, 2012) and critical social work theory (Hurley & Taiwo, 2019) as most suitable to guide the interpretation of our reflections
It questions past and current ways of perceiving and stimulates a discourse on what would be relevant in a specific context at a specific point in time. This theory is compatible with the pedagogy of discomfort as it aims to address those structural barriers that sustain injustices (Hurley & Taiwo, 2019). Both the pedagogy of discomfort and critical social work theory are appropriate for the analysis we present in this paper
Summary
Collaboration, support and the development of a community of practice are essential and meaningful in finding hope during a period of disaster such as the COVID-19 pandemic In this autoethnographic article, nine educators employed at various higher education institutions in South Africa, from historically advantaged to disadvantaged, give reflective accounts of how we dealt with emotions ranging from anger and outrage, to a sense of helplessness, at the injustice of the roll-out of emergency remote online learning and teaching (EROLT). South Africa’s first COVID-19 case was reported in March 2020, and on 15 March 2020 a national state of disaster was declared, followed by a national lockdown on 26 March 2020 (Dispatchlive, 2020; Mhlanga & Moloi, 2020) These actions resulted in a shutdown of all higher education institutions and a complete disruption of the academic programme, with a move to EROLT. Voicing our stories in this article is a way of showing our frustrations at how EROLT unfolded, but is an opportunity for us to articulate our tacit knowledge as social work educators based on our lived experiences during the pandemic
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