Very few teachers, lecturers or students are at ease in this current COVID-19 educational environment. It is quite simply, only a sticking plaster, for a savagely beaten, bruised, and somewhat crippled patient that is the global education system.
First, I am not suggesting that anyone, anywhere, is not doing their best to come up with solutions that will keep teachers and students safe in the classrooms, and keep their families safe when they return home at the end of the day, for that must be the absolute focus of any concept of returning to the classroom. They need solutions, not sticking plasters.
And second, I am not at all critical of the efforts service providers and educational authorities and institutions, all over the world, are putting in to try to come up with effective online teaching resources that can cater to the pedagogical, or teaching practice and theory needs of the teachers, and the learning experiences that will continue to develop the learner’s abilities to function at something approaching their full capabilities. For now, sticking plasters will have to do!
The fact is, however, no matter how hard everyone tries, it is not working, and the patient, while not terminal, is causing concern. Teachers have no way of implementing those educational techniques and parameters they have spent years after their training and qualifications personalising, achieving their very individual and personal balance, the methodology that fits their personality, that, because it is delivered with an organic authenticity, is appreciated and accepted by students in hundreds of thousands of classrooms as being educationally legitimate. They didn’t need a first aid kit!
There is no way, currently, of producing this quality of educational experience now, because there is not enough time, not enough interaction, and not enough emotional investment. It is nobody’s fault; it is just this miserable hand we have been dealt! Although appreciating the perspective of some educators that teachers and learners must just embrace online learning because this is ‘the way it’s going to be from now on,’ that is fatalist. The patient will recover.
Disappointment is keenly felt among teachers who are aware that a culture of educational responsibility in terms of task completions, integrity and motivation within the learner landscape, yes learner, not learning landscape, as too few learners have embraced the concept of task and assignment completions. This lack of intensity, the lack of motivation, the lethargy, are social, not educational issues however, and require more than sticking plasters.
Timely attendance, failures to stay on camera, failure to dress appropriately for class, distractions off-camera, background noises, using phones to log in to classes, microphones and cameras that “don’t work,” insufficient language to understand instructions or teaching, are just a handful of the frustrations that teaching online throws up, and use up lots of little sticking plasters, every day!
It is not really incumbent upon us all to become ‘tech-savvy-web-based-Internet-gurus,’ overnight, but we all have a duty to deal with what is here and now as effectively as we can, and the key element of this is will. As the saying goes... “If there is a will, there is a way.” It may not all be perfect, and not everything is going to work out well. Not every teacher can deal with the technology, and not every student wants to ask questions online, or do assignments without help, or even be on camera, but being willing to participate will ensure a full recovery.
I do not believe that education requires reformation, to revise teaching and learning theories or practice. Education, teaching and learning has developed immeasurably based on social, cultural, and psychological research during the last hundred years, to say reform must happen because of COVID-19 is an unrealistic response to a crisis. Let us not throw out the baby, with the bath water!
Ray Petersen
petersen_ray@hotmail.com
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