Some countries have replaced face-to-face education with distance education in response to the coronavirus. This form of distance education differs from conventional distance education: being suddenly, unreadily and forcefully implemented, invading schooling and constituting a globally discussed phenomenon. This article builds a conceptual framework for this education, addressing the question: What are the ramifications of implementing distance education amid coronavirus? It targets Arab culture, although globalisation and the media may have harmonised any substantial cross-cultural variations. Various ramifications have emerged through analysing social-media posts, online classes and interviews. Concerning social and cultural ramifications, some may, for ideological considerations, tolerate, support, reject or subvert this education through campaigning, rumour and humour. Regarding pedagogical and psychological ramifications, unreadiness and incompetence may compromise education. Additionally, staying home may entail problems (pandemic-related stress, anxiety, depression, domestic violence, divorce and pregnancy), preventing students and teachers from learning and teaching. Concerning procedural and logistical ramifications, some Arab contexts may be digitally readier than non-Arab contexts. Additionally, stakeholders may intensify efforts to profit, ethically or unethically, from the over-demand for this education. Distance education is one of several social distancing initiatives, which Arabs have welcomed despite their well-rooted social closeness, bonding to debond, forming unorthodox ‘distanceship’.

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This article tackles the question: To what domains did education go when it left school buildings due to the coronavirus pandemic? To answer this question, 1184 observations of online activity, 1132 observations of face-to-face activity, 118 focus groups and 1110 individual interviews were undertaken. In addition, 1290 witticisms were collected, utilising humour to inform research. Data analysis reveals the relocation of education to three domains: the domestic, digital and political. Its relocation to the domestic domain has meant increased familial responsibility, fuelling domestic tensions and conflicting with home-based distractions. Its relocation to the digital domain has involved reduced physical interaction, rituality, social merit, mobility and student health. Its relocation to the political domain has given rise to issues of participation and reshaped the power, institutional fabrication and societal support of education. The conclusion introduces the concept of “coronian education”—a hybrid of the domestic, digital and political domains. Whereas pre-coronian education was limited to a single domain, the school, coronian education is fragmented across three domains. Although coronian education research is feasible in the digital and political domains, it is challenging to conduct such research in the domestic domain, as an enquiry into domesticity entails invading the private spaces of homes.

This article theorizes the functional relationship between the human components (i.e., scholars) and non-human components (i.e., structural configurations) of academic domains. It is organized around the following question: in what ways have scholars formed and been formed by the structural configurations of their academic domain? The article uses as a case study the academic domain of education and technology to examine this question. Its authorship approach is innovative, with a worldwide collection of academics (99 authors) collaborating to address the proposed question based on their reflections on daily social and academic practices. This collaboration followed a three-round process of contributions via email. Analysis of these scholars’ reflective accounts was carried out, and a theoretical proposition was established from this analysis. The proposition is of a mutual (yet not necessarily balanced) power (and therefore political) relationship between the human and non-human constituents of an academic realm, with the two shaping one another. One implication of this proposition is that these non-human elements exist as political ‘actors’, just like their human counterparts, having ‘agency’ – which they exercise over humans. This turns academic domains into political (functional or dysfunctional) ‘battlefields’ wherein both humans and non-humans engage in political activities and actions that form the identity of the academic domain. For more information about the authorship approach, please see Al Lily AEA (2015) A crowd-authoring project on the scholarship of educational technology. Information Development. doi: 10.1177/0266666915622044.