Journal article 567 views 62 downloads
'Does anyone even notice us?' COVID-19's impact on academics' well-being in a developing country
,
Cathryn Knight ,
Fiona McGaughey,
Roger Chung
South African Journal of Higher Education, Volume: 36, Issue: 1, Pages: 1 - 19
Swansea University Authors:
Tom Crick , Cathryn Knight
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PDF | Version of Record
Copyright (c) 2021 J. Hardman, Richard Watermeyer, Kalpana Shankar, Venkata Ratnadeep Suri, Thomas Crick, Kathryn Knight, Fiona McGaughey This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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DOI (Published version): 10.20853/36-1-4844.
Abstract
In March 2020, the President of South African announced that the nation would go into full lockdown in the wake of an increase in COVID-19 infections. Academics had, in some instances, only one day to prepare for ‘emergency remote teaching’. Few academics had taught online before, as South Africa’s...
| Published in: | South African Journal of Higher Education |
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| ISSN: | 1753-5913 |
| Published: |
2022
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| Online Access: |
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| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa58260 |
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| Abstract: |
In March 2020, the President of South African announced that the nation would go into full lockdown in the wake of an increase in COVID-19 infections. Academics had, in some instances, only one day to prepare for ‘emergency remote teaching’. Few academics had taught online before, as South Africa’s internet connectivity is not guaranteed in underprivileged areas, where 80% of the population reside. The online move thus necessitated an entirely novel pedagogy for most academics, with high potential for an escalation of work-related stress and related illness, outcomes we have related in the wider sphere of workplace readjustment during COVID-19, to a state of 'pandemia'. In this paper, we report on an institutional case study where we surveyed n=136 academics from a university in the Western Cape, South Africa to learn more about impacts of COVID-19 on their work. The data analysis adopts Ryff's (1995) theory of well-being. Findings indicate that the enforced lockdown due to COVID-19 and the subsequent move to online teaching has had a negative impact on academics’ sense of well-being. However, the emergence of positive, caring relationships between colleagues is reported as a significant outcome of the COVID-19 enforced move to online teaching. |
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| College: |
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Issue: |
1 |
| Start Page: |
1 |
| End Page: |
19 |