Covid-19 and "improvised" digitization in secondary education: Emotional tensions and challenged professional identity

Abstract

This research attempts to understand how teachers are experiencing the transformation from face-to-face teaching to online teaching as a consequence of COVID-19 and its professional and educational implications. It presents an initial exploration of a larger study using a qualitative methodological approach. Through eighteen semi-structured interviews with teachers of Compulsory Secondary Education and Baccalaureate in Andalusia, a picture of a teacher's experience of remote education is (re)constructed. The precariousness of the available digital infrastructure, the lack of resources and the existing digital limitations are evident. The educational consequences in terms of inequality for students and the market opportunity for edubisness is also highlighted. On the other hand, it also revealed the anguish experienced by the teachers faced with perceived abandonment by the educational administration. Difficulties were reported in view of the urgency of this "improvised" educational response where teachers do not have the resources, training and means to develop it. This has resulted in emotional tensions, unhappiness amongh teachers and the assumption of responsibility for the educational follow-up of students that have caused imbalances in the dimensions that determine the professional identity of teachers.