Communion, Care, and Leadership in Computer-Mediated Learning during the Early Stage of COVID-19

Živilė Sederevičiūtė-Pačiauskienė,Ilona Valantinaitė,Romualdas Kliukas

doi:10.3390/su13084234

Živilė Sederevičiūtė-Pačiauskienė, Ilona Valantinaitė + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su13084234

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Journal: Sustainability	Publication Date: Apr 10, 2021
Citations: 3	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Vilnius Gediminas Technical University

Abstract

This qualitative inquiry explores how, during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic in Lithuania (European Union), the stakeholders in the education system—university teachers, general education teachers, students, and children’s parents—coped with the encountered challenge and what was important to them under the changed conditions. This paper uses a communication management objective to describe how participants in the education system responded to the emerging distance learning situation and its challenges. The phenomenographic research approach was chosen to carry out the qualitative study. The 37 interviews from higher education teachers, university students, school teachers, and parents of minor school-aged children were conducted during the early stage of COVID-19 quarantine. The research allows for concluding that, after a successful transition to distance learning, the dimensions of communion and supportive collaboration acquired importance among stakeholders in education. Starting new activities, a need for communion and mobilization for joint activities under the crisis emerged. The research showed that the adaptation period was necessary at the beginning of these new activities. Competent leadership was expected from the teacher. Additionally, the preparation of all the actors in the education process was needed. The data offer a window into the dynamics of online teaching in crisis and experiences with a new activity that are key to success. Although research on technology-mediated learning has increased in recent years, it still lags behind developments in practice.

Highlights

In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, the whole world has been coping with partial or complete social isolation
In the in-depth interviews, the actors in the education system, who unexpectedly found themselves in situations where distance learning became inevitable, disclosed the aspects of organizing distance learning of importance to them, and did not single out one as the most important
Higher education and school teachers noticed that, at the beginning of a new activity, mainly if little time was allocated to adaptation, they lacked self-confidence

Summary

Introduction

In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, the whole world has been coping with partial or complete social isolation. Before the pandemic-caused quarantine, higher education schools in Lithuania, an EU member country, just like schools worldwide, were implementing distance teaching. The transition to entirely online teaching created many challenges in all educational institutions: school and university teachers, students, and pupils learned to master new technology-mediated tools and environments, thought over assignments and tests, and had to get used to a new work routine. Living in the background of constant educational reforms, university and school teachers had encountered several challenges before the pandemic hit. The mistrust of society in higher education was among these challenges [10], including increased scrutiny from a wide array of internal and external audiences [11];

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