Making wonders with burned fingers: The experiences of ELT teachers during the online education process

Year 2022, Volume: 5 Issue: 1, 144 - 168, 31.01.2022

Pınar Şahin-durmaz , Naciye Kunt

https://doi.org/10.31681/jetol.1004567

Cited By: 1

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused a rapid shift in education all around the world, including Northern Cyprus. Although the related literature focused on the general perceptions of teachers and their experiences or challenges during the online education process that started early in 2020, there seems to be a gap in the literature regarding the well-being of the English language teachers from a broader perspective taking their interwoven roles and identities into consideration. In an attempt to fill this void in the literature, this study investigated the experiences of seven English language teachers during the online education period English medium university in Northern Cyprus regarding (1)work-life balance, (2) professional development, (3) academic activities and research, (4) collaboration and communication among colleagues, (5) relationship with the administration, and (6) teaching English online. The necessary data were collected via a demographic survey along with an auto-photography task, in which the participants took photos for the themes and explained them in short abstracts, and focus group interviews were conducted. The findings revealed that although the teachers had certain financial, psychological, and teaching-related challenges in this process, they adapted to the new normal by making sacrifices, learning from their mistakes. That is to say, adaptation to online teaching took some time, energy, practice, and collaboration, but eventually, teachers managed to survive and even enjoy the whole process despite the pain they had in their fingers.

Keywords

teacher well-being, online education, autophotography, Covid-19 pandemic, Adaptation to the new normal

References

• Bashir, M., Afzal, M. T., & Azeem, M. (2008). Reliability and validity of qualitative and operational research paradigm. Pakistan journal of statistics and operation research, 4(1), 35-45.
• Beach, R., Enciso, P., Harste, J., Jenkins, C., Raina, S. A., Rogers, R., & Yenika-Agbaw, V. (Eds.). (2009). Exploring the “critical” in critical content analysis of children’s literature. In 58th yearbook of the National Reading Conference (pp. 129-143). Oak Creek, WI: National Reading Conference. https://old.coe.arizona.edu/sites/coe/files/critical_content_analysis-nrc.pdf
• Black, M. (1954). Metaphor. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 55, 273-294.
• Bozkurt, A. & Sharma, R. C . (2020). Emergency remote teaching in a time of global crisis due to Coronavirus pandemic. Asian Journal of Distance Education. 15(1), i-vi. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3778083
• Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. (2007). Research methods in education. London: Routledge.
• Crawford, J., Butler-Henderson, K., Rudolph, J., & Glowatz, M. (2020). COVID-19: 20 countries’ higher education intra-period digital pedagogy responses. Journal of Applied Teaching and Learning (JALT), 3(1), 1-20, https://doi.org/10.37074/jalt.2020.3.1.7
• Creswell, J. W. (2007). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. Sage Publications.
• Creswell, J. W., & Miller, D. L. (2010). Determining validity in qualitative inquiry, theory into practice. Theory into Practice, 39(3), 37-41.
• Damşa, C., Langford, M., Uehara, D., & Schere, R. (2021). Teachers’ agency and online education in times of crisis. Computers in Human Behavior. 121, 106793. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2021.106793
• Dörnyei, Z. (2007). Research methods in applied linguistics. New York, NY: Oxford University Press
• Hamilton, E. R. (2016). Picture This: Multimodal representations of prospective teachers' metaphors about teachers and teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 55, 33-44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2015.12.007
• Harrison, H., Birks, M., Franklin, R., & Mills, J. (2017). Case study research: Foundations and methodological orientations. In Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research (Vol. 18, No. 1).
• Hermann, M. A., Gorlewski, J., Brookover, D., Walsh, R., Kozachuk, L., Deitz, M., & Ciminelli, E. (2020). Policy, practice, and parenthood: a study of teacher mothers. Educational Studies, 1-19.
• Hodges, C., Moore, S., Lockee, B., Trust, T., Bond, A. (2020, March 27). The difference between emergency remote teaching and online learning. Educause. https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/3/the-difference-between-emergency-remote-teaching-and-online-learning
• Karakaya, F., Adıgüzel, M., Üçüncü, G., Çimen, O., & Yilmaz, M. (2020). Teachers’ views towards the effects of Covid-19 pandemic in the education process in Turkey. Participatory Educational Research, 8(2), 17-30. https://doi.org/10.17275/per.21.27.8.2
• Kraft, M. A., Simon, N. S., & Lyon, M. A. (2021). Sustaining a sense of success: The protective role of teacher working conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 14(4), 727-769.
• Loveless, D. J., Griffith, B., Bérci, M. E., Ortlieb, E., & Sullivan, P. M. (Ed.). (2014). Academic Knowledge Construction and Multimodal Curriculum Development: IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-4797-8
• Marín, R., & Roldan, J. (2010). Photo essays and photographs in visual arts-based educational research. International Journal of Education Through Art, 6(1),7-23. http://doi.org/10.1386/eta.6.1.7_1.
• NYU Langone Health. (2020). Wearing three hats: Balancing life as a parent, teacher & employee during COVID-19. NYU Langone Health. https://nyulangone.org/news/wearing-three-hats-balancing-life-parent-teacher-employee-during-covid-19
• Oyedotun, T. D. (2020). Sudden change of pedagogy in education driven by COVID-19: Perspectives and evaluation from a developing country. Research in Globalization, 2, 100029. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resglo.2020.100029
• Pain, H. (2012). A literature review to evaluate the choice and use of visual methods. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 11(4), 303–319. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940691201100401
• Silman-Karanfil, L., & Can, İ. (Eds.). (2021, March). Alice in Wonderland or Hamster on a Wheel: Metaphorical Conceptualizations of Emergency Remote Teaching. Paper presented at 8th International Congress on Curriculum and Instruction Curriculum Studies in Life Long Learning.
• Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1998). Basics of qualitative research techniques.Thousand oaks, CA: Sage publications.
• Sokal, L., Trudel, L. E., & Babb, J. (2020). Canadian teachers’ attitudes toward change, efficacy, and burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic. International Journal of Educational Research Open, 1, 100016. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedro.2020.100016
• Sokal, L., Trudel, L. E., & Babb, J. (2021). I've had it! Factors associated with burnout and low organizational commitment in Canadian teachers during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. International Journal of Educational Research Open, 2, 100023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedro.2020.100023
• Şener, B., Sağlam-Ertem, İ., & Meç, A. (2020). Online teaching experiences of ELT instructors. Journal of Educational Technology and Online Learning, 3(3), 340-362. https://doi.org/10.31681/jetol.770418
• Taylor, C. (2020, October 4). How to do a critical discourse analysis. Wikihow. https://www.wikihow.com/Do-a-Critical-Discourse-Analysis
• Vu, C. T., Hoang, A. D., Than, V. Q., Nguyen, M. T., Dinh, V. H., Le, Q. A. T., Le, T. T., Pham, H. H., & Nguyen, Y. C. (2020). Dataset of Vietnamese teachers’ perspectives and perceived support during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data in brief, 31(10), 105788. https://doi.org/105788. 10.1016/j.dib.2020.105788
• Vyas, L., & Butakhieo, N. (2020). The impact of working from home during COVID-19 on work and life domains: an exploratory study on Hong Kong. Policy Design and Practice, 4(1), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/25741292.2020.1863560
• Weber, R. P. (1990). Basic content analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications