Caring for Adolescent Learners in the Virtual Classroom: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic

Authors

Stephanie Welch, Texas Tech UniversityFollow
Jeasik Cho, Texas Tech UniversityFollow

Abstract

In the recent past, fully online instruction has been most prominent at the higher education level, though online K-12 schools have lately gained some traction. However, the COVID-19 pandemic precipitated new potential for rapid expansion of online K-12 education. As these settings continue to develop, the unique social emotional needs of adolescent learners must be considered, and the need for a robustly developed online pedagogy of care is pressing. An unexpected and untapped resource for developing a framework for an online pedagogy of care can be found in examining the practices of traditionally face-to-face teachers who were unexpectedly thrust into a virtual setting during the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years. This case study examined the experiences of three traditionally face-to-face middle school teachers as they began a new school year in an entirely virtual format. Their experiences demonstrate a high potential for teacher modeling of care and individualized feedback for students and suggest that creating authentic moments for student dialogue and practice of collaborative caring interactions may prove challenging in the virtual setting.

Keywords

online pedagogy of care, adolescents, online education, case study, COVID-19 pandemic

Author Bio(s)

Stephanie Welch is a graduate of the Ph.D. program in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction in the College of Education at Texas Tech University. She is a practicing secondary mathematics teacher. Her areas of research include Culturally Responsive Math Teaching, Social Emotional Learning, Adolescent Learning, and the curriculum enactment process. Please direct correspondence to stephanie.welch@ttu.edu

Jeasik Cho is an Associate Professor of the Department of Curriculum & Instruction in the College of Education at Texas Tech University. He received his doctorate degree from The Ohio State University in curriculum theory, qualitative research/evaluation, and teacher education. He has a new book, Evaluating Qualitative Research (Oxford University Press, 2018), and has published many research articles in areas of curriculum, teacher education/multicultural education, and qualitative research. His current research interests include compassion-based curriculum theory in post-pandemic multicultural education, culturally relevant metacognition, inclusion/accessibility/success in higher education, and so on.

Publication Date

9-4-2024

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

DOI

10.46743/2160-3715/2024.5882

Recommended APA Citation

Welch, S., & Cho, J. (2024). Caring for Adolescent Learners in the Virtual Classroom: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic. The Qualitative Report, 29(8), 2239-2258. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2024.5882

ORCID ID

0009-0000-7703-7758