The Effects of Remote Pandemic Education on Crafts Pedagogy: Opportunities, Challenges, and Interaction

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic caused many sudden social changes, including a shift to remote education in many countries. In Finland, remote education also concerns crafts as a standard school subject, combining aspects of art, design, textile, and technology in basic education. Accordingly, Finnish craft teachers faced the unprecedented situation of teaching remotely a subject, which often involves hands-on activities with tangible tools and materials. The present study explores how craft pedagogy has been adapted to remote education by looking at the opportunities and challenges it faces and the effects on classroom interaction. The data consist of the output of two webinars (i.e. 27 group assignments from 123 participants) organised in the autumn of 2020 and targeted at craft teachers and student craft teachers at various levels of the education system. The qualitative, data-driven content analysis reveals that remote teaching provides beneficial opportunities for involving students’ everyday lives and families in craft education. However, challenges exist relating to the unequal distribution of materials, as well as technical and social resources at different levels of education and in various contexts. Our study also finds that remote teaching is more teacher-centred and task-oriented than classroom interaction. Online teaching facilities allow teachers to provide students with more individual feedback but make maintaining students’ peer interaction difficult. Although remote craft education was considered very challenging at first, teachers have managed to create useful pedagogical practices to be utilised in and beyond the era of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Safeguarding Traditional Crafts in Europe

“…The pandemic showed that CHIs and creative communities are considering becoming more active online through podcasts, live content, and game creation; e.g., 40% of the museums increased online visits when closed, and 41% increased visits when they re-opened due to online engagement during the pandemic [72,73]. At the same time, people involved in craft training and craft production have adapted their strategies by intelligently applying ICT technologies to provide online tutoring [74] and employing digital marketing to enhance the visibility and availability of their products online [75].…”

At the Intersection of the Digital and the Material: Teaching and Learning Crafts during the Pandemic

“…Indeed, the curriculum of crafts in basic education directs using digital means for designing, documenting, and assessing craft processes (FNBE, 2016). Fortunately, this background helped craft teachers to adapt their teaching to remote pedagogy as the pandemic hit the world (Kouhia, Kangas & Kokko, 2021).…”

“…In our previous study on remote pandemic craft education (Kouhia, Kangas & Kokko, 2021), we analyzed experiences and reports about learning and teaching crafts during the Covid-19 pandemic, shared by 123 craft educators representing craft teachers mainly from basic education but also from other institutions, such as vocational training and non-formal adult education. We conducted an inductive qualitative coding of the data consisting 27 groupwork documents produced by the educators participating in two craft webinars on remote craft pedagogy in autumn 2020.…”

“…In this commentary, we deepen this analysis (see Kouhia, Kangas & Kokko, 2021) by focusing particularly on the digital-material revolution that occurred in crafts during the pandemic. Our intention is to open a discussion of the worth and value of digital pedagogy in crafts, resulting in a better understanding of the possible futures of the school subject.…”

Teacher Competencies in Facing Limited Face-to-face Learning in the New Normal Era

“…Support for this process applies when normal face-to-face learning or Distance Learning (PJJ) takes place during the pandemic. However, PJJ is more teacher-centered and task-oriented than classroom interaction [5].…”