Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced a shift to online teaching and learning (OTL) in colleges and universities across the globe, requiring teachers to adapt their teaching in a very short time—independent of whether they were prepared. Drawing from an international sample of N = 739 higher education teachers in 58 countries, the present study sheds light on teachers' readiness for OTL at the time of the pandemic by (a) identifying teacher profiles based on a set of key dimensions of readiness; (b) explaining profile membership by individual teacher characteristics, contextual aspects of the shift to OTL, and country-level indicators representing educational innovation and cultural orientation. We conducted latent profile analysis and identified three teacher profiles with consistently high or low readiness or an inconsistent readiness profile—hence, teachers in higher education are not a homogeneous group. Importantly, key individual and contextual variables, such as teachers’ gender and prior OTL experience, the context of the OTL shift, the innovation potential in education, and cultural orientation, explained profile membership. We discuss these findings with respect to the nature of the profiles, how they can be understood with respect to key determinants, and their implications for OTL in higher education.
Highlights
Online teaching and blended learning have been part of teaching in higher education for nearly two decades (e.g., Singh & Thurman, 2019)
We examined the extent to which the profiles of teacher readiness for online teaching and learning (OTL) at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic were subject to gender differences
The measurement model distinguishing between three factors of perceived online teaching presence (POPCLA, Perceived online teaching presence: Feedback to students (POPFED), Perceived online teaching presence: Cognitive activation (POPCOG)) exhibited a good fit to the data, YB- χ2 (57) = 165.1, p < .01, CFI = 0.977, RMSEA = 0.051, SRMR = 0.033
Summary
Online teaching and blended learning have been part of teaching in higher education for nearly two decades (e.g., Singh & Thurman, 2019). The event of the COVID-19 pandemic and the respective imple mentation of social distancing protocols resulted in a rapid transition to OTL (Online Teaching and Learning) between March and April 2020 for most higher education institutions around the world, independent of whether teachers were prepared (UNESCO IESALC, 2020). This rapid transition of all teaching provides a unique opportunity to observe the extent to which teachers felt prepared for OTL (Brooks & Grajek, 2020).
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