Online pedagogy: a changing higher education pedagogy and an emerging lecturer habitus

Abstract

This study explored how the shift to online pedagogy has shaped lecturer dispositions and practices for a post-COVID-19 era, including whether their practices during the national lockdowns could be conceptualised as temporary coping mechanisms or as an adoption of new practices related to effective modes of online teaching. Bourdieu’s theory of human practices was employed to facilitate the exploration. The theory privileges the weight of past practices on agents while permitting incremental changes in such practices, depending on the flexibility and/or rigidity of a human habitus. Six lecturers were interviewed using semi-structured interviews to collect data. It was found that despite showing flexible and reflective dispositions regarding post-COVID-19 online teaching, participants were still in their exploratory phase in respect of teaching practices with online technology tools. An explicit institutional, reflective training process is suggested to help evolve in lecturers the habitus and cultural capital necessary to facilitate teaching with technology.