Tag Archives: Ethics

Featured research: Emergency remote education and COVID-19

A global outlook to the interruption of education due to COVID-19 pandemic: Navigating in a time of uncertainty and crisis

By Aras Bozkurt, et al.

Two UVic researchers are co-authors on this open access paper: Valerie Irvine and Michael Paskevicius.

Abstract:

Uncertain times require prompt reflexes to survive and this study is a collaborative reflex to better understand uncertainty and navigate through it. The Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic hit hard and interrupted many dimensions of our lives, particularly education. As a response to interruption of education due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this study is a collaborative reaction that narrates the overall view, reflections from the K-12 and higher educational landscape, lessons learned and suggestions from a total of 31 countries across the world with a representation of 62,7% of the whole world population. In addition to the value of each case by country, the synthesis of this research suggests that the current practices can be defined as emergency remote education and this practice is different from planned practices such as distance education, online learning or other derivations. Above all, this study points out how social injustice, inequity and the digital divide have been exacerbated during the pandemic and need unique and targeted measures if they are to be addressed. While there are support communities and mechanisms, parents are overburdened between regular daily/professional duties and emerging educational roles, and all parties are experiencing trauma, psychological pressure and anxiety to various degrees, which necessitates a pedagogy of care, affection and empathy. In terms of educational processes, the interruption of education signifies the importance of openness in education and highlights issues that should be taken into consideration such as using alternative assessment and evaluation methods as well as concerns about surveillance, ethics, and data privacy resulting from nearly exclusive dependency on online solutions.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
This article was originally published at:
10.5281/zenodo.3878571
Bozkurt, A., Jung, I., Xiao, J., Vladimirschi, V., Schuwer, R., Egorov, G., Lambert, S. R., … &
Paskevicius, M. (2020). A global outlook to the interruption of education due to COVID-19
pandemic: Navigating in a time of uncertainty and crisis. Asian Journal of Distance
Education, 15(1), 1-126. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3878572.

To read more, visit UVicSpace

 

C. Janzen, D. Jeffery & K. Smith – Unravelling Encounters

Each year UVic faculty, staff, students, alumni, and retirees produce an incredible amount of intellectual content reflecting their breadth and diversity of research, teaching, personal, and professional interests. A list of these works is available here.

Unravelling EncountersThe new book Unravelling Encounters: Ethics, Knowledge, and Resistance under Neoliberalism, co-edited by UVic Faculty member Donna Jeffery, is a multidisciplinary book that brings together a series of critical engagements regarding the notion of ethical practice. This interesting text will lead readers into new ways of thinking about the relationship between power and ethics.

About the Book

As a whole, the book explores the question of how the current neo-liberal, socio-political moment and its relationship to the historical legacies of colonialism, white settlement, and racism inform and shape our practices, pedagogies, and understanding of encounters in diverse settings.

The contributors draw largely on the work of Sara Ahmed’s Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality, each chapter taking up a particular encounter and unravelling the elements that created that meeting in its specific time and space. Sites of encounters included in this volume range from the classroom to social work practice and from literary to media interactions, both within Canada and internationally. Paramount to the discussions is a consideration of how relations of power and legacies of oppression shape the self and others, and draw boundaries between bodies within an encounter.

From a social justice perspective, Unravelling Encounters exposes the political conditions that configure our meetings with one another and inquires into what it means to care, to respond, and to imagine oneself as an ethical subject.

About the Editorsdonnaj

Donna Jeffery is the acting Director and an associate professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Victoria. Underpinning her work is this question: What explanatory frameworks do we draw on to explain our practice and our professional/personal identities? Jeffery has recently published in Ethics and Social Welfare, The Canadian Geographer, and Journal of Progressive Human Services.

Caitlin Janzen is a Ph.D. student in sociology at York University. Her doctoral research focuses on women’s psychic responses to representations of violence against other(ed) women. Janzen is the co-author of articles that have appeared in Hypatia, Violence Against Women, and Journal of Progressive Human Services.

Kristin Smith is an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at Ryerson University. Her research focuses on neo-liberal restructuring and critical social work practice and she has authored and co-authored articles in Affilia, The Canadian Geographer, and British Journal of Social Work.