Embodied teacher identity: a qualitative study on ‘practical sense’ as a basic pedagogical condition in times of Covid-19

AbstractWorldwide, the Covid-19 pandemic has transformed teaching contexts rapidly. Studies  on the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have largely focused on students’ learning and well-being. In contrast, little is known about how emergency online teaching affects teachers. The aim of this study was to examine how disrupted teaching contexts during the Covid-19 pandemic affected academic teacher identities in health science education. Interviews were conducted with 19 experienced lecturers in health science education from two universities. Interview data were analysed using systematic text condensation. The established codes were compared across interviews to identify com mon themes and subsequently synthesized into descriptions of the emerging phenomena. Findings indicated that a form of embodied teacher identity, i.e. internalized teaching practices turned into dispositions, constituted a basic pedagogical condition and a resource for the teachers, and that the sud den change in the teaching context caused a loss of teacher identity. This identity loss was related to an incorporated understanding and use of the teacher’s sense of the classroom (subtheme 1), non-verbal feedback from students (subtheme 2) and reciprocal visual contact (subtheme 3). Data also i ndicated that teachers’ ability to adapt their teaching to students’ needs while teaching and teachers’ motivation and job satisfaction may have suffered. Universities should carefully consider how t...
Source: Advances in Health Sciences Education - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: research