Abstract
This study examines academic teachers' agency and emergency responses, prompted by the physical closure of universities and university colleges due to the COVID-19 crisis. The pandemic-related lockdown accelerated the digitalization of education and forced teachers to adjust their teaching. A theoretical model is elucidated, in which teachers' agency is understood as the willingness to engage in iterational, practical-evaluative, projective, and transformative action despite the existence of practical, personal, and institutional constraints. We explored the nature and degree of this agency through a survey of university teachers in Norway in the first month of the lockdown. Teachers attempted to create learning environments that facilitated knowledge transfer and interaction and sought to solve problems through self-help and support from colleagues and network, although many struggled with insufficiently developed digital competence and institutional support. Latent profile and qualitative analyses revealed different clusters of teacher responses, from strong resistance to online teaching through to transformation of teaching practices. Qualitative analyses unveiled different expressions of teachers' agency, both ostensible and occlusive, whereby action was shaped by constraining circumstances. These findings can inform future studies of online teaching, indicate the conditions for development of teachers’ digital competence, and illustrate the challenges brought about by crises.
Highlights
The physical closure of higher education institutions due to the COVID-19 crisis accelerated the digitalization of teaching in the sector at record speed, and required academic teachers to adjust immediately their educational activities
The descriptive account below provides a brief overview of self-reported activities and constraints, followed by the reports on three profiles of conduct identified through latent profile analysis (LPA), and outcomes of the qualitative analysis, through illustrations and interpretation of teachers’ agency
This study provides a contribution and clear signal that higher ed ucation must systematically cultivate digital competence, to promote, build, and sustain transformative agency of teachers
Summary
The physical closure of higher education institutions due to the COVID-19 crisis accelerated the digitalization of teaching in the sector at record speed, and required academic teachers to adjust immediately their educational activities. In the context of the lockdown that followed the COVID-19 outbreak, teaching - predominantly online - was highly contingent. Digitaliza tion allowed academic teachers to expand educational repertoires and challenge the status quo (Aagaard & Lund, 2020). They were confronted with the challenges of online teaching, pressed to mobilize digital competence, and to design and deliver a successful learning experience in a difficult and time-constrained context (Lang ford & Damsa, 2020). Online teaching became the function of the integration of diverse elements (disciplinary, pedagogical, personal, organizational, and technological)–with the expectation that teachers would manage productively the dynamics of this process
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