Disruptions, distractions, and discoveries: Doctoral students’ reflections on a pandemic

Abstract

This paper describes the reflections of two social work PhD students based on their personal and professional experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic. The students describe their positionality and use that to expound on the impact of the pandemic on their lives. They reflect on the disruptions to their social work education and research priorities including transitioning to online learning and modifications to research agendas. They then discuss ongoing distractions such as worries about getting sick, mental health concerns, and financial constraints. They share their discoveries about glaring disparities in coronavirus infection and death rates, the need to adjust research agendas in response to current events, and the urgency for qualitative research strategies to add meaning to the numbers being reported. In addition, the authors describe shared experiences and intersections they discovered while writing this essay. Finally, recommendations for practice include recommitting to social work values to help surmount the ongoing waves of this pandemic; reimagining social work education so that disparities and injustice intersect with every subject taught and graduates become experts at leading social change; and harnessing the untapped potential of qualitative research to drive real, systemic change.

Relationality and online interpersonal research: Ethical, methodological and pragmatic extensions

“…The issue of burden considers what personal and relational costs there might be to accessing devices and the internet (Eigege and Kennedy, 2021). Evaluating participant burden includes knowing whether the connecting devices are individually owned or shared, if devices have capacity for the installation of new apps that researchers prefer, and the costs associated with connecting online (e.g.…”

Enhancing Multimodal Interaction and Communicative Competence through Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) in Synchronous Computer-Mediated Communication (SCMC)

“…Thanks to the emergence and wide availability of modern technological tools, SCMC has become more complex in recent years. Compared to traditional oral or written conversations, students today can interact online simultaneously through video, audio, images and text by using one or several digital tools, but this enriched multimedia interaction in modern distance learning poses new problems such as the effects of disruptions and distractions, whether for intrinsic or extrinsic reasons, and their impact on student engagement and the learning process [29]. For this reason, it is necessary to adopt digitally oriented methodologies to enhance online interaction, which can be threefold: teacher-student, student-student and student-materials.…”

In (and about) this special issue: Things are NOT normal

“…As an academic job candidate in the United States, Clary (2021), reflects on the challenges and benefits of virtual job interviews while offering practical advice. Eigege and Kennedy (2021), social work doctoral students from very different positionalities reflect on the differential impacts of the double pandemic of racism and the novel coronavirus and the implication for qualitative inquiry in social work research. Beech et al (2021) imagine a changed academia where motherhood can be visiblized and celebrated within the academy.…”