No abstract

This paper looks at the impact of digital technology on teaching and learning in primary schools in Scotland during the first COVID-19 lockdown from March to June 2020. The pandemic has challenged our understanding of schooling as, for the first time in many years, schools as we know them were shut and the school building was removed as the site of teaching and learning. This paper uses the concept of Thirdspace as developed by Edward Soja (1996), where Thirdspace is understood as an in-between space between binaries that enables the possibility to think and act otherwise. Drawing from qualitative data from interviews with primary school teachers, this paper explores how the lockdown in general, and digital technology in particular, facilitated a Thirdspace in the first COVID-19 lockdown. Findings from the study indicate that engaging with digital technology offers the teacher more possibilities than they have come to expect in the physical space of traditional schooling.

This article looks at three primary Head Teachers’ experience of working in COVID-19 lockdown in Scotland. The theoretical framework of this paper builds on Nel Noddings’ ethics of care, with a particular focus on reciprocity, empathy, communication, and community. The three Head Teachers were interviewed during the pandemic lockdown. These interviews are part of a larger study that interviewed teachers and Head Teachers during COVID-19 lockdown in Scotland, asking how this lockdown challenged and influenced their identity as educators. The focus on care is important as during lockdown in Scotland the focus of home learning was on pupils and families’ well-being and care, rather than on performative acts of learning. This paper argues that the pandemic provided an alternative space for the Head Teachers to re-negotiate their caring role and identity in their understanding of being an educational leader.

No abstract

No abstract