Doctoral Students and Their Adviser Reconsider Teaching and Care During COVID-19 Pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of researchers at the U of A noticed a shift in classroom behavior and the need to adapt the learning strategies they prioritize in the classroom.

"During a time of isolation, there was a greater need for caring and connection as we all fought to connect over distances with one another and to our course material," said professor Christian Z. Goering.

Through a series of discussions focusing on their experience in the K-12 school system, their graduate experiences and their experiences teaching future educators, authors Camie Wood, Jacob Warren, Holly Sheppard Riesco, Katie Hackett-Hill and Goering published "On a Journey into the Unknown: Critical Care Pedagogy, COVID, and Teacher Education," a chapter in Reconstructing Care in Teacher Education After COVID-19.

The doctoral students and their adviser from the Department of Curriculum and Instruction explored classroom instruction and learning after the onset of the pandemic, focusing on changes in instructional practices and student needs, and incorporating new practices centered around reflection, care, collaboration and action.

The authors address an essential question: "Why should we — and how can we — enact a critical care pedagogy within teacher education programs, now and in the future?"

"This chapter establishes the need for practices centered around reflection and care by highlighting the massive changes the education system endured during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and the stress and anxiety that accompanied these changes," Goering said. The chapter provides a way forward for how new practices that involve reflection and caring can be implemented in the education system to alleviate learning problems caused by stress and anxiety.

"COVID-19 emphasized the need for many of these new practices, and our educational experiences with COVID have provided an opportunity for changes that would have been beneficial even if the pandemic had not occurred," he said. "During the post-pandemic era of rebuilding our connections to one another, it is even more imperative that a pedagogy of care be enacted in classrooms and institutionalized in policy."

Goering added, "I met three of four of these amazing doctoral advisees during the pandemic. Forming deep working relationships was important to our collaborative work and their studies, true, but in the grander scheme of life, supporting one another as humans was how we started and ended all work-related conversations. Collaborating on this chapter allowed us to explore — and attempt to keep for the future — those practices that helped."

The volume was edited by Melanie Shoffner and Angela Webb of James Madison University and published by Routledge.