Lockdown literacies and semiotic assemblages: academic boundary work in the Covid-19 crisis

Gourlay, Lesley; Littlejohn, Allison; Oliver, Martin; Potter, John

doi:10.1080/17439884.2021.1900242

Cited by 35 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…These range from optimistic outlooks on 'best practices' of 'what works' and 'what we have learned' in terms of digital educational provision, to more sombre analyses of effects such as 'learning loss', 'Covid slide', 'unfinished learning', 'digital poverty', widening inequalities, commercialization and privatization, and the challenges of well-being and mental health, as well as many others. Many practitioners working in education have had to develop new 'lockdown literacies' to manage the processes of teaching at a physical distance from students, lecture theatres, classrooms, science labs and practice studios (Gourlay et al 2021). For some, this has felt dysfunctional and disorientating, while for others it has enabled experimentation and innovation in the practices, spaces, and relationships through which teaching and learning occur (Watermeyer et al 2021).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Covid-19 controversies and critical research in digital education

Williamson

Macgilchrist

Potter

2021

Learning, Media and Technology

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If financial markets are taken as the main measure of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on education since early 2020, then education technology ('edtech') has finally arrived with disruptive and transformative force in education systems around the world. With reports of over $16billion USD venture capital investment in edtech in 2020 alone, and spectacular valuation claims of prospective returns to come, financial investors and edtech companies are not just seeking to increase their profit margins, but investing in 'a vision to transform how the world learns' (HolonIQ 2021). These are new speculative 'investments in forms' of unique digital education (Decuypere, Grimaldi, and Landri 2021) that produce digital assets promising generous prospective market returns (Komljenovic 2021). For financial specialists, the disruptions of Covid-19 have inspired a 'digital transformation' of education, at all levels, and they are investing further to fully realize this valuable vision of the future of post-pandemic education. In other words, through speculative financial valuations and market-making devices, investors are 'betting upon and hedging against future educational developments … and even shorting educational futures' in the pursuit of 'wealth extraction' (Facer 2021, 6).Markets, of course, are neither the only measure of the impact of the pandemic on education systems, outcomes, policies and practices, nor the only means for imagining and investing in education futures, however speculative and spectacular their valuation claims may be. Local and national governments have tried to build their own, independent, infrastructures for education. Nonprofits have leapt into action, developing and distributing resources. Radio has turned up again. Countless research studies, press reports, assessments by learned societies, education agency reports, consultancy and think tank analyses, and more, have sought to identify both the positive and negative effects of the crisis on learners, educators, and institutions. These range from optimistic outlooks on 'best practices' of 'what works' and 'what we have learned' in terms of digital educational provision, to more sombre analyses of effects such as 'learning loss', 'Covid slide', 'unfinished learning', 'digital poverty', widening inequalities, commercialization and privatization, and the challenges of well-being and mental health, as well as many others. Many practitioners working in education have had to develop new 'lockdown literacies' to manage the processes of teaching at a physical distance from students, lecture theatres, classrooms, science labs and practice studios (Gourlay et al. 2021). For some, this has felt dysfunctional and disorientating, while for others it has enabled experimentation and innovation in the practices, spaces, and relationships through which teaching and learning occur (Watermeyer et al. 2021). These effects will have been experienced very differently in diverse contexts, and remain to be fully examined and understood as education systems set out ...

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confidence: 99%

Covid-19 controversies and critical research in digital education

Williamson

Macgilchrist

Potter

2021

Learning, Media and Technology

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“…This has significant impacts on what it means to be a teacher. For example, Gourlay et al (2021) write of how physical and spatial boundaries have been rearranged and Watermayer's (2021) survey of over a thousand UK academics suggests deep concern that the future of online educator is instrumental rather than pedagogic. The pandemic must exacerbate what is already troubling but it is also making it more visible.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Longing for connection: University educators creating meaning through sharing experiences of teaching online

Fox

Bearman

Bellingham

et al. 2021

Brit J Educational Tech

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This paper presents a reflexive analysis of how university educators experience the shift to increasing online teaching in 2019. We explore what it means to be an online educator in contemporary higher education and aim to raise questions about how we approach online education and understand ourselves as educators, informed by a sociomaterial lens. The research utilised collaborative autoethnography (CAE) to facilitate meaning‐making and uncover complex perspectives through collaboration and conversation. This enabled us to question what we as educators were losing and what we were gaining as a consequence of shifting to more online modes of teaching via university mandated platforms and processes. Through this methodology, various themes emerged: the role of corporeality; how we constructed ourselves through texts; how others materialised us in virtual spaces; the experience of online time; and our transforming practices and identities. This paper provides a snapshot of a significant cultural milieu in academia as we were afforded time to engage in reflexive practice about teaching online just as the academic world was abruptly mandated to shift almost wholly online. It also provides unique insights into the significance of understanding ourselves as both embodied and social, and the importance of community within academia. What is already known about this topic Higher education's shift online, both before and during COVID, has had a substantial effect on university staff, including discomfort and loss of agency. What this paper adds Considering the material and embodied is important in online education, particularly because it can be taken‐for‐granted and hence overlooked. Feelings of disconnection can result from the inevitable gap between how educators represent themselves online and how others perceive (“materialise”) them online. Experiencing a lack of connection with online students provides the opportunity to question assumptions about student experiences and develop more nuanced online teaching practice. Teaching requires some kind of reconciliation between the linear time as laid out in learning design and the not‐yet‐here/always‐there time of online learning. Implications for practice and/or policy Attention must continue to be paid to the experiences of educators as even experienced ones find teaching online disturbs identities and practices. Collegially sharing virtual spaces may assist university educators in making sense of the shifts demanded by online teaching and allow more active modelling of meaning‐making processes for students. Teaching may benefit from deliberate consideration of developing online personas and reflection on how to accommodate them within academic professional identities.

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“…There are now many studies of how diverse academics in the UK and internationally are managing their detailed arrangements when faced with this new situation (Gourlay et al 2021;Littlejohn et al 2021;Jandrić et al 2020) as well as students' views on their experiences (Higher Education Policy Institute 2020). As Gourlay writes, lockdown has required much creative improvisation as our domestic spaces are now not only about working/studying but also being on view to online audiences, requiring detailed re-arrangements of spaces and technologies: Most of the participants describe an unfolding 'making' process, in order to create some work space.…”

Section: Learning Time-space-tech In a Pandemicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring Inequalities in the Social, Spatial and Material Practices of Teaching and Learning in Pandemic Times

Boys

2021

Postdigit Sci Educ

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This article conceptualises higher education as a complex and dynamic set of entangled social, spatial and material practices — enacted, adapted and contested across spaces and technologies as these interact with diverse learners, teachers, curricula and contexts. Using modes of enquiry that start from this inherent complexity and intersecting these with contemporary disability and education studies, I ask how some of the normative social and spatial practices of higher education are being surfaced by the pandemic. Rather than framing Covid-19 as a massive shift from ‘normal’ (face-to-face) to ‘abnormal’ (virtual) delivery modes, I propose that its impact both continues and alters assumptions about what constitutes ‘proper’ university education, and both perpetuates and disrupts what is ‘noticed’, valued and supported in conventional teaching and learning processes. To do this, I will focus on two themes in current HE practices in the UK, as examples of what such an approach can open-up to view. This starts from the already existing tensions, complexities and contradictions as to what should constitute appropriate teacher and student behaviours and settings, and how this ‘normality’ is often being perceived as being lost because of the pandemic. By engaging with existing literature about longer-term patterns of inequalities in access and inclusion across physical and virtual HE learning environments, I hope to show some underlying problems in how student competency is being evidenced in virtual as compared to physical space and some ways the pandemic has exposed the unevenness of diverse student and staff relationships to space, time and technologies and the differential impacts on their educational experiences.

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Lockdown literacies and semiotic assemblages: academic boundary work in the Covid-19 crisis

Cited by 35 publications

References 33 publications

Covid-19 controversies and critical research in digital education

Covid-19 controversies and critical research in digital education

Longing for connection: University educators creating meaning through sharing experiences of teaching online

Exploring Inequalities in the Social, Spatial and Material Practices of Teaching and Learning in Pandemic Times

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