Primary Head Teachers’ Construction and Re-negotiation of Care in COVID-19 Lockdown in Scotland

Abstract

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.

“We Will Appreciate Each Other More After This”: Teachers' Construction of Collective and Personal Identities During Lockdown

“…The findings from our project highlight that one of the rhetorical devices employed by headteachers and other senior leaders to justify their actions and professional identity during the Covid-19 crisis was to emphasize collegial relationships with others. Our research does not contradict the findings of Ferguson et al ( 2021 ); in many ways the findings of the two studies are aligned. However, our findings emphasize the importance of attending to the rhetorical purpose of such claims and their function in discourse, rather than accepting such self-positionings as representative of an objective reality.…”

“…Research on teacher–pupil relationships highlights how teachers' sense of professional identity shifted as welfare support for children took priority, with teachers organizing food banks and delivering learning materials (Moss et al, 2020 ). The requirement to teach online was particularly challenging for those who sought to construct respectful and communicative relationships with families and children embedded within an ethic of care (Jones and Kessler, 2020 ; Ferguson et al, 2021 ), and for teachers who sought to meet children's basic need for relatedness (Wong, 2020 ). Our research on teachers' relationships with their colleagues appears to suggest that it was not only relationships with students which demanded identity work during the Covid-19 crisis, but also relationships with other teachers.…”

Technology as Thirdspace: Teachers in Scottish Schools Engaging with and Being Challenged by Digital Technology in First COVID-19 Lockdown

“…In fact, we start this discussion by referring to the impact of the school building and also the impact of its loss during lockdown on the binaries mentioned above. Elsewhere we have highlighted an increased awareness of the importance of the school building [14] as a site which allows for structures and processes to bring about equity and social justice [26]. The closure of the school building caused the necessity for innovative ways of ensuring the continued enactment of these two values, so that teachers and Head Teachers reported numerous creative initiatives in their attempts to reach out to all children, particularly those who were deemed vulnerable [26].…”

“…Elsewhere we have highlighted an increased awareness of the importance of the school building [14] as a site which allows for structures and processes to bring about equity and social justice [26]. The closure of the school building caused the necessity for innovative ways of ensuring the continued enactment of these two values, so that teachers and Head Teachers reported numerous creative initiatives in their attempts to reach out to all children, particularly those who were deemed vulnerable [26]. The three themes above similarly emerge due to the loss of the physical school building and the prominence of digital technology to connect people in its absence and are thus intertwined.…”

Teachers Working in Special Schools in Scotland Acting with Practical Wisdom: Supporting Children with Additional Needs in COVID-19 Lockdown

“…This had already been researched and written about in the past: Grumet [40] argues that teachers accord their school children much the same rights as they do their own children; Pat Sikes [41] p. 76 reports that many of the parent-teachers in her study felt that their feelings of care and love for the children in their classes became more intense when they had their own children. Yet this lockdown has intensified these thoughts and feelings because of the blurring of these boundaries [42,43]. The teachers' character, their habits, inform their decisions and actions, which lead to experiences which in turn contribute to the continuous formation of character and habits.…”