Pedagogical continuities in teaching and learning during COVID-19: Holding up the bridge

Abstract

2020 and 2021 in higher education were characterised by pandemic-related disruptions to conventional modes of teaching and learning. These prompted discussions about pedagogic shifts, academic continuity and the future of teaching and learning. Debates on the ‘future-focused’ university have raised questions about system-level and resourcing issues, teaching and learning practices and new ecologies of e-learning. This paper engages with these debates to better understand the continuities and discontinuities in the new pedagogies and how these affect what universities may do differently going forward. The pandemic prompted exploration of hybrid models of teaching and learning, with radical changes to traditional face-to-face teaching. The theoretical framework of the paper synthesises the concepts of pedagogical continuity and social justice to analyse the research findings. The research is based on data collected from interviews with 15 senior academic leaders at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) about how they negotiated pedagogy during the transition to emergency remote teaching (ERT) and online teaching and learning. The findings indicate that academic staff were able to draw significant gains in the transition to ERT that may offer new opportunities and possibilities for learning in an uncertain future.

Student-Centred and Transformative Online Pedagogies Employed by Lecturers During the COVID-19 Pandemic at a South African Higher Education Institution

“…However, the shift did not come without challenges. Menon and Motala argue that the shift to ERT and online learning brought issues of social justice, pedagogical inclusion and epistemic access to the fore during the pandemic [14]. Factors such as a lack of devices and data, network challenges, limited band-with, living conditions that were not conducive to studying and psycho-social factors compromised learning during the abrupt transition from face to face to Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT).…”

Digital Curricular Transformation and Fourth Industrial Revolution 4.0 (4IR): Deepening Divides or Building Bridges

“…These findings are similar to Motala and Menon's study where academics found it challenging to secure regular student engagement in spite of sophisticated student tracking systems. 77 Indeed, digital inequality is also a function of the level of engagement. 78 Inability to interact or communicate electronically could result from the (fear of the unknown) anxiety associated with digital learning, low levels of digital literacy, or other barriers, including unconducive home conditions and electricity disruptions.…”

No student left behind: ‘Pedagogies of comfort’ or ‘pedagogies of disruption’?

“…Software and hardware resources were made available to ensure students could continue the academic year programme (Motala & Menon, 2022). Interventions were made to address modalities of curricular delivery to accommodate the students' challenges (Hendricks, 2022).…”

“…Instead, the personal obstacles to their success are foregrounded, and routine expediency and habituated orientations become acceptable. These reflections on a theoretical underpinning of the pedagogical practices respond to the challenge offered by Motala and Menon (2022) that the higher education discourse should expand beyond programmatic expediencies, the completion of the academic year programmes and graduation outputs. This second section opens up a vocabulary of the nature of a pedagogy of disruption as a lever to elevate the quality of postgraduate education as analysed reflectively in the next section.…”