“Suspending Classes Without Pauses for Learning”

Abstract

This qualitative study investigated Chinese secondary teachers' perceptions and experiences of remote teaching immediately following the pandemic. Forty-two secondary teachers participated in the study. Data included 30-hour interviews and were analyzed using inductive methods to identify emerging codes and themes. Findings showed a wide variability in teachers' experiences with online teaching ranging from the workload change, parental involvement, and availability of technology resources. However, teachers developed a negative attitude toward remote learning while feeling underprepared to teach online. In addition, greater access to technology use during online teaching did not change Chinese teachers' views towards the goal of education and their overall teaching philosophy and pedagogy. The study provided practical implications regarding how to prepare effective classroom teachers using technology and improves distant education development and management.

Establishing an Online Writing Centre: Understanding Writing Consultants’ Perceptions and Experiences of Synchronous Virtual One-to-One Tutoring

“…Described as the 'biggest online learning experience for students so far in Hong Kong' (Chan, 2020), the large-scale use of web conferencing for the delivery of live-streaming classes, which was uncommon in local higher education before the pandemic (Kennedy & Fox, 2013), was triggered by the territory-wide social unrest in November 2019 and then shortly the local COVID-19 outbreak (Crawford et al, 2020;Moorhouse & Kohnke, 2021b). Following the government's enforcement of physical and social distancing policy and the official mantra 'Suspending Classes without Suspending Learning' (Yeung, 2020), all university teaching and learning activities shifted from face-to-face to synchronous virtual, regardless of teachers' and learners' readiness for ERT. This paper is part of a larger study of writing centre peer tutoring in a leading research-intensive English-medium university in Hong Kong.…”