‘Death’ of a teacher? Pandemic, pedagogy and virtual classrooms

ABSTRACT

The global pandemic, COVID-19, has revealed the cracks and crevices in our societies. From the economy to education, the pandemic has impacted all aspects of human life concerning planning, governance and policymaking in significant ways. The temporary closure of educational institutions necessitated the shift to an online mode of teaching and learning. While for most countries across the globe, this transition was very challenging. In the Global South, it raised critical questions on social inequality and accessibility. Academic documentation of the plight of the students amidst the pandemic from backward socio-economic classes is already in progress. Against this backdrop, the paper captures the perspectives of the educators and their strategies of adaptation by engaging with the experiences of the author’s location in a public university in Western India. Drawing from the immediate observations concerning this widespread shift from physical to virtual classrooms, the paper discusses the developments in education systems and the role of the teacher within them. At a time when massive open online courses and other free-to-use resources are widely available, the paper raises the question – is it going to lead to the ‘death’ of a teacher?

KEYWORDS:

• Pandemic
• online education
• virtual classrooms
• global south
• public universities
• India

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The Ministry of Human Resource Development of India, as a part of its National Mission on Education through ICT, started the e-PG Pathshala, implemented by the University Grants Commission. It included course content from various disciplines of 70 subjects.