Embarking Digital Learning Due to COVID-19: are Teachers Ready?

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in school closures all over the globe and forced students to embark on digital learning to ensure learning continuity. The implementation of digital learning on educational settings has posed challenges particularly for developing countries to improve human resources and infrastructure. On this basis, this study explores the teacher readiness in conducting digital learning in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. This exploratory study employed an online questionnaire and semi-structured interviews via either voice or video calls to safely gather data from K-12 teachers of 27 different schools in the middle of the pandemic in Yogyakarta. This study found that the teachers perceived they were psychologically, technologically, and pedagogically ready to conduct digital teaching and learning. This study also discovered that the digital learning problems were mostly encountered by teachers in rural areas. Another problem was generated from the different levels of students’ affordance of technology that mainly led to digital learning inequality. Therefore, this study proposed an alternative choice of technology and teaching methodology to adopt and to adjust as a solution to the occurring learning problems. In addition, it also discussed the teachers’ perceptions of digital learning.