To Teach or Not to Teach: An International Study of Language Teachers’ Experiences of Online Teaching During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Schools have been switching to online learning to ensure students’ learning continuity during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there is a paucity of studies examining language teachers’ motivations and decisions for continuing online teaching in the future. This study aims at investigating the significant factors influencing language teachers’ motivations and decisions on online teaching. Based on the aim of this study, three research questions guided this study: (1) What was language teachers’ experience of online teaching? (2) What motivates language teachers to teach online after the COVID-19 pandemic? (3) What demotivates language teachers to teach online after the COVID-19 pandemic? Eight language teachers coming from six countries and regions, namely, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Russia, and Taiwan, were selected to have two one-on-one semi-structured interviews. The researcher used Social Cognitive Career Theory as a theoretical framework and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis as the methodology to examine language teachers’ experiences in-depth. This study found that better time management and a positive learning environment are the reasons for continuing online language teaching, while personal beliefs on education and negative teaching outcome expectations are the reasons for stopping online language teaching. The findings can provide insights for the education institutions, school management and policy-makers to devise appropriate strategies to boost language teachers’ motivations to incorporate online teaching in the post-pandemic era.

Teachers’ Perceptions of Online Teaching Do Not Differ across Disciplines: A Survey

“…However, insufficient class time and training opportunities are the main obstacles in the ICT integration process [28]. Important factors influencing language teachers' motivation and decisions to adopt online teaching in the future have been identified [40]. However, the results of these studies do not reflect specific disciplinary characteristics.…”

D-Learning and COVID-19 Crisis: Appraisal of Reactions and Means of Perpetuity

“…Senior students who had face-to-face relationships before the pandemic expressed their ability to communicate remotely, whereas first-year students struggled the hardest to build relationships remotely. Kwee [ 15 ], however, focused on teachers by investigating the incentives and the deterrents that impact language instructors' online teaching decisions. The research is based on three questions that should provide pertinent data on what teachers think of online education, what motivates them to continue teaching remotely, and what challenges force them to give up these courses.…”

Surviving or Thriving? Experiences and job satisfaction of language instructors in the USA during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…The availability of necessary technology to facilitate remote teaching as well as institutional support in general was also related to more job satisfaction with online instruction in a study surveying 1844 teachers in Mexico across school levels (Reynoso et al, 2021). For some instructors, the shift to online remote language teaching was seen as a positive opportunity to try new approaches to teaching and new technology tools (Mueller & Oguro, 2021), and others felt that online teaching had increased their work efficacy (Kwee, 2022).…”

“…While some instructors noted that online teaching was less time consuming (Appel & Robbins, 2021;Kwee, 2022), and minimized materials having to be produced for in-class instruction (Santos et al, 2021), most teachers noted that online remote teaching was more time-intensive and increased their workload (Burgin et al, 2022;Kozhabayeva & Boivin, 2021;Lin & Zheng, 2015;MacIntyre et al, 2020;Zamborová et al, 2021). There were different opinions on whether shifting to remote online instruction presented an increase in workload for language instructors.…”

“…To date, there is a lack of research that focuses on language teacher experiences and perceptions of teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic in the USA. Previous research deals with European educational contexts (Milena & Nataša, 2021;Zamborová et al, 2021), Asian countries (Alhumaid et al, 2020;Gao & Zhang, 2020;Kozhabayeva & Boivin, 2021;Lei & So, 2021;Santos et al, 2021;Todd, 2021;Todd, 2020;Zou et al, 2021), South andCentral America (Aguilar-Cruz et al, 2021;Burgin et al, 2022;Reynoso et al, 2021), and a mix of countries excluding the USA (Kwee, 2022). Only a handful of studies so far have analyzed language teachers in the US and their reactions to the pandemic in the contexts of: US teachers' intentions to teach online after the pandemic (Jin et al, 2021), evaluating quality online language instruction (Gacs et al, 2020), and identifying coping mechanisms for stressors during the pandemic (MacIntyre et al, 2020).…”