Vol. 4: No. 2: 2022

Special Issue: Theory and Practice in Remote Teaching, Online Learning, and Distance Education for K-12

Abstract

There are many situations where digital technology has served as the lifeline or salvation for society. Unexpected and unpredictable situations like catastrophic floods, blizzards, earthquakes, and more recently the Covid-19 pandemic have forced families to stay home, meaning that digital technologies have become important tools for people to work and learn. Other examples are societal and regional challenges such as lack of qualified teachers, diminishing birth rates, and difficulties in filling classrooms that force digital and educational development. The symposium held in May 2021, which resulted in this special issue, was intended to explore possibilities for ensuring equal access to education in rural schools using remote teaching. At the symposium, different strategies to increase access to education in the context of K-12 using digital technologies was presented and discussed. It brought together researchers from Europe and North America, all represented in this issue.

Looking Back to See Ahead: An Analysis of K-12 Distance, Online, and Remote Learning During the Pandemic

Abstract

While the use of distance and online learning had been used for over a century in the K-12 setting (including in isolated ways during previous pandemics and natural disasters), the complete worldwide closure of schools focused attention on the use of distance and online tools and content to provide continuity of learning in a remote context. The way in which both practitioners and scholars make sense of what has occurred over the past 18 months, and what is likely to continue into the future, will impact both regular schooling and how we prepare for future crisis. This article explores this pandemic pedagogy, with a goal of situating the events since March 2020 within the broader field and providing guidance on a path forward.

Shifting Selves and Spaces: Conceptualising School Emergency Remote Teaching as a Third Space

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic was the catalyst for unprecedented change within education systems around the world. Teaching and learning which had traditionally taken place in school classrooms suddenly moved online. Teachers’ responses to the emergency changed not just pedagogy but who was teaching as well as when and where teaching took place. Bhabha’s ‘third space’ (1994) provides a way of re-imagining the new spaces (both physical and virtual) which were created in response to the pandemic. We report on data from two research studies in Scotland conducted in the 2020-21 academic year covering two lockdown (stay at home) periods: one comprising interviews with nine educators in Scotland; the other study using two rounds of focus groups with eleven early career teachers. Our research thus enquires into the lockdown practices of a range of teachers and managers across different local authorities in Scotland, exploring how they engaged learners using digital technologies during two national lockdowns. Across both studies, digital technology played a key role in how this third space was mediated and the findings show participants’ emotional highs and lows of working within this new space. It also shows teachers’ changing perceptions of children and families and how power relations evolved over the lockdown periods. Technology facilitated the emergency response, but questions remain as to what the legacy of this forced shift will be. This paper points to the importance of two-way communication between home and school and how third spaces using digital technologies could bring home and school funds of knowledge closer together.

In Need of Development, Learning and Research? : On the Possibilities of a Common Point of Departure for Digital and Educational Development

Abstract

A growing body of initiatives aims to connect school improvement with external actors, such as universities, by means of networks and collaborative partnerships of different kinds. Simultaneously, many schools have difficulties in assessing or predicting their needs associated with the digitalization of a specific local school practice given their lack of existing tools to articulate those needs. This has made it difficult to study digitalization in a complementary and symmetrical way between academia and practice. In this study, we used a quantitative instrument to generate findings and development needs relevant to both research and school development. The instrument, which we distributed to all school leaders in one municipality, measures perceptions of three overall areas: (a) levels of digitalization, (b) organizational digital maturity, and (c) notions of leadership. The data shows, for example, that digitalization, in this municipality, was a concern or issue on an individual level. Achieving a more complex view of digitalization as school development—a collegial approach and mindset together with leadership and organization that focuses on strategy and common goals—appears to be a high priority for research and practice. To conclude, the results generated from the instrument used in this study can contribute to a shared understanding of the findings and the needs relevant to both research and school development.

Through the Lens of Situated Learning and Levels of Scale: Theorizing Development of Remote Teaching and the Role of On-Site Facilitators

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to contribute to theoretical development within a field otherwise mostly characterized by empirical contributions, with a primary focus on the practice and perspectives of on-site facilitators. To theoretically understand the development and use of remote teaching, we focus on the interaction between systems of human activity in education and the relationships enacted in practice through their interaction, with a focus on on-site facilitators’ work. In doing so, we use the concept levels of scale in situated learning. Through levels of scale, we conceptualize the historical development of remote teaching as the large scale and the remote learning environment as the small scale. Integrating the levels of scale and tracing the historical development of remote teaching in Sweden into the enactments taking place in a classroom of modern language teaching is the concrete theoretical development that our aim entails.

A Theoretical Framework for Synchronous Remote Teaching? Reshaping the Pedagogical Triangle

Abstract

This paper explores synchronous remote teaching as a pedagogical practice and elaborates upon a framework with which to understand the practice theoretically. The empirical backdrop comprises remote teaching practice in Sweden, where this practice is implemented via digital technology and with an onsite facilitator who is present with the students. The pedagogical triangle is revisited, examined, and explored in relation to remote teaching as a new pedagogical practice. In the theoretical elaboration, the pedagogical triangle is reshaped into a pyramid due to the onsite facilitator’s participation in the remote teaching. This elaboration is a first step to establishing a theoretical understanding of remote teaching practice on its own terms.

Book Review: Indigenous Efflorescence. Beyond revitalisation in Sápmi and Ainu Mosir

Abstract

This is a book review of an anthropological anthology, Indigenous Efflorescence. Beyond revitalisation in Sápmi and Ainu Mosiredited by Gerhard Roche, Hiroshi Maruyama and Åsa Virdi Kråik (2018). The volume acknowledge ongoing efforts around the globe to revtalise languages and cultures, defining Indigenous efflorescence as a slow revolution occurring almost unnoticeably. Examples from two Indigenous peoples are provided, Sámi and Ainu, giving voice to thirty contributors who describe contexts and practices of ´Indigenous efflorescence´ in a broad variety of settings. The review focusses on the merits of the concept of Indigenous efflorescence with a special emphasis on three of the chapters where digital contexts are provided. (Indigenous) efflorescence is an interesting theoretical concept to investigate in relation to theory and practice in remote teaching, online learning, and distance education for K-12 schools as it stresses the aim with any educational practice, which is the growth and flourishing of those involved. It also offers leverage against simplistic narratives of both decline and progress. This volume does what it sets out to do: offer hope and stimulate projects for supporting Indigenous efflorescence.