Teaching in a third space during national COVID-19 lockdowns: in loco magister?

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about rapid change in the way education was delivered in terms of online teaching and how this was managed by families in their homes. This study looks at the relationship between home (first space) and school (second space) and uses the concept of the 'third space' (Bhabha, H. [1994]. The Location of Culture, London: Routledge) to explore home-school links. Nine participants working in six local authorities in Scotland were questioned during the first lockdown in 2020 and then interviewed during the second national lockdown in 2021. Their responses were analysed in terms of the awareness they had of home funds of knowledge and the influence this had on their pedagogy online. The researchers investigated whether a third space had emerged and, if so, what the features of this hybrid space were. A key finding relates to the role of parents in the third space, in loco magister. In the first lockdown, glimpses of third space learning were visible in children's achievements online. In the second lockdown, however, parental concerns to preserve some semblance of orderly family life led to the colonisation of the spatio-temporal dimensions of online teaching, seeing the return to more transmissive teacher approaches and missed opportunities for children's learning.

Shifting Selves and Spaces

“…Two studies of teachers in Scotland during the pandemic in 2020-21 have been brought together (Carver and Shanks, 2021;Johnston, Foy, Mulligan and Shanks 2021), with a new round of data analysis for the purposes of this paper. While these previous studies considered how teachers viewed their roles and professional learning needs during the time of crisis, this post-lockdown study had the benefit of space and hindsight to explore the extent to which third space could offer a useful lens for understanding teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

“…Data comes from two qualitative studies. One was conducted solely by researchers at the University of Aberdeen, using email correspondence and semistructured interviews with nine educators comprising primary and secondary school classroom teachers, Head Teachers and a local authority education officer (referred to below as T1 to T9) chosen to provide a heterogeneous sample (Johnston, Foy, Mulligan and Shanks, 2021). The other was an online focus group study conducted by researchers at the Universities of Aberdeen and Strathclyde with a sample of eleven recently qualified primary and secondary school teachers (referred to below as A to K) from those two institutions (Carver and Shanks, 2021).…”

“…More recently, the defining feature of secondary qualitative analysis is a shift in purpose from the original study, typically emphasising 'verification, refutation and refinement' (Heaton, 2004, p.9), meaning that the new study has a different purpose, question, method, data source, or research team. In this study, the combination of datasets can be seen as partly changing the source, the use of top-down coding changing the analysis method, the research team partly merging, and by using Carver and Shanks (2021) dataset to examine the transferability of the theoretical framework established in Johnston, Foy, Mulligan and Shanks (2021).…”

“…Zecca and Cotzab (2020) also described how teachers responded to the forced shutdown of school buildings in their creation of virtual third spaces that encouraged a more egalitarian dialectical relationship among participants beyond the bounds of conventional hierarchical social structures. In a previous article, Johnston, Foy, Mulligan and Shanks (2021) showed how third spaces were capitalised on during first lockdown in Scotland, with children and their parents calling on their home funds of knowledge to transform school tasks online, producing creative responses that enabled teachers to see their children differently and, on occasion, more positively. During the second lockdown, however, parental concerns to maintain more orderly family home circumstances led to requests for more structure and routine, leading to transmissive, school-led activities.…”

“…Home and school are traditionally viewed as separate contexts with clearly defined and impermeable boundaries (Cook, 2005), with one-way communication (Marsh, 2003) leading to the colonisation of home spaces in the facilitation of school objectives (Grant, 2011). In contrast, lockdown placed parents 'in loco magister' (Johnston, Foy, Mulligan and Shanks, 2021) as new possibilities emerged, blurring roles, responsibilities, and power relations as learning shifted online. Third space offers a useful lens through which to examine the extent to which newness entered the world of teachers, pupils, and their families as they attempted to maintain the continuity of education.…”