Teaching Care During Covid-19: Reflective Assessment for Becoming-Historians

Abstract

This article argues that the Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) that took place during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 left learners and teachers alike awash in feelings of helplessness, loss, and anguish. While online learning literacy and pedagogy have improved over the course of 2020 and 2021, and interesting and important innovations have been implemented and explored, the foundational inequalities have not lessened or disappeared. This article argues for the use of care as a necessary pedagogy in the virtual classroom using a case study of one class. The labour of care needs to be considered as part of the labour of pedagogy during Covid-19. I argue for care being built into both pedagogy and assessment as part of a radical pedagogy for this time. I explore reflective assessment embedded in a pedagogy of care as a way to, if not combat, recognise and respond to the inequalities embodied in ERT and the society it exists in, towards radical change. Active reflection draws out the impact that ERT has had on the “being” and “becoming” of pre-service History teachers.