Impacts Experienced by Faculty Stemming from the Intersection of the Covid-19 Pandemic and Racial Tensions

The Journal of Interactive Media in Education published a special issue entitled Learning from Lockdown: challenges and benefits. Colleagues and I contributed a paper on the Professional and Personal Impacts Experienced by Faculty Stemming from the Intersection of the Covid-19 Pandemic and Racial Tensions. Our abstract appears below:

The disruption that resulted from COVID-19 in 2020 impacted the ways in which higher education faculty lived and worked. Earlier literature describes how faculty members’ experiences during the early months of the pandemic included emotional impacts such as stress and anxiety, with little support to manage these impacts. In this paper we report on a thematic analysis of interviews with Canadian faculty members which revealed that the sources of impacts on Canadian faculty were both the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as racial tensions. These impacts revealed themselves in both the personal and professional lives of participants. With regard to their professional role, participants reported that the additional time and care that they put towards learning new technologies, implementation of new teaching practices, support of students, and efforts to sustain their perceived obligations as a scholar carried an emotional burden. With respect to their personal lives, participants noted that emotional impacts emanated from increased caring responsibilities for family and friends, reduced in-person connections, and news reports and social media. We conclude by presenting support recommendations for individual faculty members, teaching and learning centres, and university administrators.

Belikov, O., VanLeeuwen, C., Veletsianos, G., Johnson, N., Torcivia, P. (2021). Professional and personal impacts experienced by faculty stemming from the intersection of the COVID-19 pandemic and racial tensions. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 1, p. 8. http://doi.org/10.5334/jime.647

One highlight of this paper that isn’t visible in the final product: Being able to support and mentor Olga, Charlene, and Nicole in publishing. Also: finally being able to identify an opportunity to work with Patrice on a paper!

You may also be interested in the rest of the papers in this issue:

• Editorial: Learning from Lockdown Special Collection
• Moving Teaching Online: Cultural Barriers Experienced by University Teachers During Covid-19
• Professional and Personal Impacts Experienced by Faculty Stemming from the Intersection of the Covid-19 Pandemic and Racial Tensions
• Emergency Remote Teaching During COVID19: The Role of Teachers’ Online Community of Practice (CoP) in Times of Crisis
• Professional Development for Sustaining the ‘Pivot’: The impact of the Learning Design and Course Creation Workshop on Six Belarusian HEIs
• Caring in Practice, Caring for Knowledge
• Teacher Education in the Emergency: a MOOC-Inspired Teacher Professional Development Strategy Grounded in Critical Digital Pedagogy and Pedagogy of Care
• Barriers in Times of Digital Teaching and Learning – a German Case Study: Challenges and Recommendations for Action
• A Case Study in Mitigating COVID-19 Inequities through Free Textbook Implementation in the U.S.
• ‘Engagement’ Discourses and the Student Voice: Connectedness, Questioning and Inclusion in Post-Covid Digital Practices
• The Choices that Connect Uncertainty and Sustainability: Student-Centred Agile Decision-Making Approaches Used by Universities in Australia and the UK during the COVID-19 Pandemic