Abstract
<p style="text-align: justify;">The Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has increased anxiety and stress among teacher education managers and has given rise to the question of whether they have the competencies to execute their operational responsibilities productively. The theories of resilience and transformational leadership underpin this study in which teacher education managers’ resilience and their responsiveness to the well-being of staff executing their operational practices in an open distance e-learning context were explored. A qualitative approach was adopted and virtual video conferencing interviews with teacher education managers were used to explore how they mitigated their strategic and operational roles and their managerial functions to ensure the well-being and organisational performance of staff working from home. Results revealed the experiences of distance managers to have been positive in that they implemented organisational strategies to mitigate the challenges faced to ensure wellness and performance among staff working from a distance. Further research applying a mixed-method design should be undertaken to determine how resilient managers and staff working from home are. That may yield different results.</p>
Highlights
The Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has caused a pandemic that is impacting the world of work drastically
A dualistic theoretical framework based on the theories of resilience and transformational leadership was applied in the context of teacher education managers” (TEMs) at the College of Education (CEDU), one of the colleges at an open distance elearning (ODeL) university
Participants in the study were positive about the impact of the pandemic that had accelerated a sense of care among distance managers as part of a new institutional culture based on the shared experience that to work at home and manage staff working from home (WFH) could be lonely
Summary
The Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has caused a pandemic that is impacting the world of work drastically. The last week of March 2020 changed our lives completely and drastically into something that has become the “new normal”. A week before the dramatic new reality took effect, distance managers and staff sat in their offices on campus, planning events for the year. On the 27th of March 2020, the South African government had declared a state of national disaster which citizens were forced to adhere to social distancing, the wearing of masks and constant hand sanitising. Universities have been forced to shift their teaching towards e-learning and blended learning modes. Institutions of higher learning have ventured into online video conferencing as part of teaching and learning. Many hours of conventional teaching and learning at contact residential and distance education universities have been lost, taking a serious toll on academic performance and, possibly, on throughput-rates
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