Performing pandemic pedagogy

ABSTRACT

As schools began the frantic switch to fully remote education while the COVID-19 pandemic escalated in the United States, the Facebook group Pandemic Pedagogy rapidly became a worldwide interdisciplinary hub for navigating online instruction. Autoethnographic reflection on the development of that group leads to analysis of key issues emerging from discourse among the members. Critical examination of the home as a learning environment and concerns about synchronous online learning suggest broader systemic inequities that affect online education. Two areas of crisis rise to prominence: digital divides based on disparities in access, skill, and technological features; and the reassertion of neoliberal approaches to education. Original poems within this essay immerse readers in the tensions and disruptions that infuse education during the pandemic. The traumas inflicted by the pandemic can stimulate more vigorous practice of communal, care-based, collaborative resilience through reimagining the nature and purpose of communication instruction.

KEYWORDS:

• Online education
• resilience
• critical pedagogy
• pandemic
• autoethnography

Notes on contributor

Roy Schwartzman (Ph.D., University of Iowa) is Professor in the Department of Communication Studies and affiliate faculty with the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies, University of North Carolina at Greensboro.