Coping Orientation of Academic Community in the Time of COVID-19 Pandemic: A Pilot Multi-Country Survey Study

In this paper, we have mapped the coping methods used to address the coronavirus pandemic by members of the academic community. We conducted an anonymous survey of a convenient sample of 674 faculty/staff members and students from September to December 2020. A modified version of the RCOPE scale was used for data collection. The results indicate that both religious and existential coping methods were used by respondents. The study also indicates that even though 71% of informants believed in God or another religious figure, 61% reported that they had tried to gain control of the situation directly without the help of God or another religious figure. The ranking of the coping strategies used indicates that the first five methods used by informants were all non-religious coping methods (i.e., secular existential coping methods): regarding life as a part of a greater whole, regarding nature as an important resource, listening to the sound of surrounding nature, being alone and contemplating, and walking/engaging in any activities outdoors giving a spiritual feeling. Our results contribute to the new area of research on academic community's coping with pandemic-related stress and challenges.

The Sociological Role of Empathy in the Classroom

Teaching during a global pandemic has prompted many discussions about how faculty can best support students and create classrooms where deep learning and engagement occur. In this conversation, we argue there is a role for empathy in college classrooms. We present data from interviews with faculty at a small, Midwestern, teaching-focused university during the fall of 2020. We map these perspectives onto the empathy paths framework and suggest that the therapeutic and instrumental paths are most useful for understanding empathy in the classroom. We also discuss why it is important for faculty to think about empathy and the role sociology can play in these conversations. Finally, we present a series of empathetic practices individual faculty can incorporate into their pedagogy and structural supports that departments and universities can provide to help faculty engage in empathetic practices in the classroom.

How a Sense of Collective Efficacy Influences Teacher Learning during Change: The Role of Academic Optimism and Shared Vision

Purpose: The purpose of this study is twofold. First, this study reflects on the development of professional capital through understanding collective cultural factors, namely, academic optimism and shared vision. Second, it aims at exploring teacher learning. Teacher learning resulting in changes to teacher knowledge, attitudes and practices is crucial for the necessary changes education is continually confronted with. This learning is too often studied as a result of individual traits or structural factors, such as motivation or time. The authors investigated how teacher learning is influenced by academic optimism and shared vision. Design/methodology/approach: The authors administered an online web-based survey to 278 teachers in higher education, using the educational change to online learning due to the COVID pandemic as a unique chance to study the role of collective cultural factors in teacher learning. Findings: Results showed how teachers characterized their learning, academic optimism and shared vision during the educational change to online learning resulting from the COVID pandemic. The authors found that teacher learning was greatly influenced by teachers' collective sense of efficacy, an aspect of their academic optimism. Teachers' strong belief in each other, that they as fellow professionals could handle the challenging changes that the COVID pandemic required, strongly enhanced teacher learning during the COVID pandemic. Teachers' feeling of a professional community helped teacher to make sense of, and push through, the undeniable chaos that was the COVID pandemic. Originality/value: Collective cultural factors are rarely studied in conjunction with educational change. Insights into how a collective culture of professionalism enhances or hinders teacher learning are important for theory, policy and practice as it helps understand how teacher teams can be supported to build their professional capital by learning from educational change.

Student Satisfaction on Lecturers' Effectiveness, Efficiency and Productivity: Malaysian Education Landscape during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has engulfed the whole planet, including the education sector in Malaysia. As a result, the quality of lecturers' work is critical in maintaining the number of students in a university, particularly during a pandemic. Lecturers are put through their paces as they move from traditional to e-learning, learning new ways to teach classes, navigating technology, using new skills, and utilising their own knowledge. This study analysed responses of 892 local students from various officially registered public higher learning institutions throughout Malaysia. Convenient sampling method was used to gather responses through online google forms from the above respondents. The outcomes of this study provided some insight on how Malaysian higher education institutions might redeem themselves by offering better service to the society, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Experience of Teaching Public Administration in Russia during the Pandemic in 2020-2021

The main aim of the study was to analyze the impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic both on the public services and on public administration (PA) education, to find out how the process of teaching of future public administrators had changed during the Pandemic and how these changes could possibly influence the process of teaching public administrators in future. The research methods included theoretical and analytical research methods, the methodology of empirical research, and comparative research methods. The latest works of PA scholars in the global context, the materials of the study provided by the teams of teachers of the leading Russian universities concerning teaching experience during 2020, and the latest data provided from the analysis carried out at the Institute for Social Sciences of Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Moscow, in the conditions of distant and mixed learning in 2020-2021, allowed the author to give some practical advice to teachers and education managers concerning the improvement of the educational programs for PA students regarding the new conditions of the study. The main conclusion made on the results of the analysis is that digitalization of teaching and learning process and organization of distant learning at the time of the COVID-19 Pandemic should be considered to be the most important issues in PA education which could be applied in PA education in future. The recommendations concerned such aspects as the development of digital competencies of students, distant regime implementation, new pedagogy and digital didactics, socialization of students, internationalization and academic mobility of students, improving the qualifications of teachers and university management teams, research work, and the development of meta-competencies of future public servants.

"The Stories We Tell Ourselves Shape Our Identities": Journals in a Plague Year

The author--in the role of one teacher observing another--documented a spring 2021 remote introductory art history course during the COVID-19 pandemic when graduate student teaching assistants called a campus-wide strike. Forced to improvise, the professor replaced formal analysis papers and exams with an ungraded journal. Drawing from the content of these journals, notes from the Zoom classes, and email correspondence with the professor, the author explicates how students took this journal assignment as an invitation to respond personally to the course content, and as an opportunity to grapple with their own identities. These journals allowed students to use art to explore similarities and differences freely across culture, space, and time. With the traditional requirement for an academic argument temporarily on pause, the author raises questions that characterize our present day: how to encourage a world that accepts different identities without hostility.

Report on the Condition of Education 2023. NCES 2023-144

The "Report on the Condition of Education" is a congressionally mandated annual report from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Using the most recent data available (at the time this report was written) from NCES and other sources, the report contains key indicators on the condition of education in the United States at all levels, from prekindergarten through postsecondary, as well as labor force outcomes and international comparisons. There are core indicators that are updated every year and spotlight indicators that provide in-depth analyses on topics of interest to education agencies, policymakers, researchers, and the public. At the broadest level, the Condition of Education Indicator System is organized into five sections: family characteristics;preprimary, elementary, and secondary education;postsecondary education;population characteristics and economic outcomes;and international comparisons. The Report on the "Condition of Education 2023" encompasses key findings from the Condition of Education Indicator System. The full contents of the Indicator System can be accessed online through the website or by downloading PDFs for the individual indicators. [For "The Condition of Education 2023": At a Glance, see ED628291. For the "Report on the Condition of Education 2022. NCES 2022-144," see ED619870.]

Marxismo e Serviço Social: palestra do Professor José Paulo Netto

Os manuscritos ora apresentados constituem a transcrição — ainda que com algumas adaptações — da palestra proferida pelo Professor José Paulo Netto, em 29 de setembro de 2020. Desde logo, informamos ao leitor que o presente texto passou pelo crivo do palestrante que, depois de atenta leitura, aprovou-o para publicação. A atividade supracitada foi organizada pelo Programa de Pós-Graduação em Serviço Social, da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Como já estávamos enfrentando a crise sanitária decorrente da pandemia da Covid-19, a palestra foi realizada na forma de um Webinário, com a minha mediação. Na ocasião, o Professor José Paulo Netto abordou o tema Marxismo e Serviço Social: elementos para pensar a pesquisa, a produção do conhecimento e os desafios do trabalho dos assistentes sociais. Como destacamos já à época, o professor José Paulo Netto tem um carisma inquestionável e uma competência intelectual amplamente reconhecida. Trata-se de uma exposição sobre o tema feita por um dos mais importantes marxistas da atualidade no Brasil. Suas contribuições ultrapassam as fronteiras do Serviço Social, tanto brasileiro como latino-americano, caribenho e europeu. José Paulo Netto tem contribuído para o debate da teoria social marxista e, por isso, tem também reconhecimento em outras áreas do conhecimento, o que acaba por fortalecer o próprio Serviço Social brasileiro, haja vista que é um agente desta categoria. Quem o conhece sabe que a sua produção intelectual é acompanhada pela militância política, no contexto das lutas anticapitalistas. Não por acaso, José Paulo Netto recebeu a insígnia de ser um marxista sem repouso, não só pela sua contribuição no âmbito da academia, mas também pela sua capacidade de problematizar e colocar luzes sobre as pautas e as lutas da classe trabalhadora. A exposição de José Paulo Netto que agora chega ao público também em forma de uma publicação escrita por esta edição da Revista Katálysis foi realizada num período imediatamente precedente à publicação daquela que já tem sido reconhecida como uma de suas mais importantes produções intelectuais. Trata-se do seu livro Marx: uma biografia, que foi lançado no final de 2020 e que deu forma a um sonho que perseguia o autor desde a sua adolescência. Este sonho, talvez mais do que poderia ele imaginar, tem ganhado força social na medida em que tem suscitado nos estudiosos do marxismo, principiantes ou não, questionamentos importantes sobre o nosso tempo histórico a partir da obra e da vida de Karl Marx, o que evidencia a atualidade do seu pensamento para orientar as lutas pela emancipação humana.Alternate :The following manuscript results from the transcription — albeit with some adaptations — of the lecture given by Professor José Paulo Netto, on September 29, 2020. The text was reviewed by the speaker himself, who, after careful reading, approved it for publication. The aforementioned event was organized by the Postgraduate Program in Social Work, at the Federal University of Santa Catarina. Since we were already facing the global health crisis resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, the lecture was held in a Webinar format and coordinated by me. During the occasion, Professor José Paulo Netto addressed the theme entitled Marxism and Social Work: reflections on research, knowledge production, and the challenges of social workers' practice. As we pointed out at the time, Professor José Paulo Netto has undeniable charisma and widely acknowledged intellectual competence. The theme was tackled by one of the most important Marxists in Brazil today. His contributions surpass the boundaries of Social Work, both Brazilian and Latin American, Caribbean and European. José Paulo Netto has enriched Marxist social theory in general and, therefore, he also has an impact on other areas of knowledge, which further strengthens the Brazilian Social Work, since he is a representative of this category. Those who know him are aware that his intellectual career is accomp nied by a life of political militancy, in the context of anti-capitalist struggles. Not by chance, José Paulo Netto has received the title of being a restless Marxist, not only for his efforts in the academic field, but also for his capacity to challenge and shed light on the agendas and struggles of the working class. This lecture by José Paulo Netto which now is brought to the general public in the form of a written piece, published in this issue of Katálysis Journal, was held right before the release of what has already been recognized as one of his most important intellectual works. His book Marx: a biography, which was released in late 2020 and fulfilled one the author's teenage dream. This dream come true, perhaps more than he could have imagined, has gained social force to the extent that it has raised in scholars of Marxism, beginners or not, relevant questions about our historical time from the work and life of Karl Marx, which highlights the relevance of his thought to guide the struggles for human emancipation.

Reimagining Teacher Identity in the Post-COVID-19 University: Becoming Digitally Savvy, Reflective in Practice, Collaborative, and Relational

Objective: Through the crisis of COVID-19 university teachers have been pushed into the realm of emergency remote teaching (ERT), familiar ways of living, working and being, brought unprecedented additional uncertainty and vulnerability to an already highly complex context. The purpose of this narrative review was to look at how these transformations affected teacher identity and the ways relationality shifted during this time. The intention was to bring relationality, care, collaboration, and excellent teaching possibilities, into the centre of our thinking. Whilst recognising the pandemic as a traumatic experience for many, it is a hopeful paper. Method: An examination and thematic analysis of literature published from March 2020-November 2020 on ERT. Results: The crisis and corresponding shift to teaching online demanded faculty to overcome their bias against online delivery, reimagine teaching, resulting in increased innovation and unexpected positive experiences which continue to rise. Conclusion: Teachers already engaging with student-centred approaches, relational pedagogies, reflective practice, community networks, and/or digital technologies managed the transition to online teaching and learning more effectively. Future teacher training requires effective online education, how to design and deliver, how to collaborate, and how to make relational connections with others, and access to resources.

Innovative Digital Practices and Globalization in Higher Education. Advances in Higher Education and Professional Development (AHEPD) Book Series

We are moving toward a future in which digital practices are becoming more ubiquitous. Also, there is evidence to suggest that innovative digital practices are changing the face of 21st-century learning environments. Critical to 21st-century teaching and learning success is continued emphasis on learner preferences, shaped by innovative digital technology-driven learning environments alongside teacher awareness, knowledge, and preparedness to deliver high-impact instruction using active learning pedagogies. Thus, the purposeful and selective use of digital learning tools in higher education and the incorporation of appropriate active learning pedagogies are pivotal to enhancing and supporting meaningful student learning. "Innovative Digital Practices and Globalization in Higher Education" explores innovative digital practices to enhance academic performance for digital learners and prepare qualified graduates who are competent to work in an increasingly global digital workplace. Global competence has become an essential part of higher education and professional development. As such, it is the responsibility of higher education institutions to prepare students with the knowledge, skills, and competencies required to compete in the digital and global market. Covering topics such as design thinking, international students, and digital teaching innovation, this premier reference source is an essential resource for pre-service and in-service teachers, educational technologists, instructional designers, faculty, administrators, librarians, researchers, and academicians.

The Transition from Emergency Remote Teaching to Quality Online Course Design: Instructor Perspectives of Surprise, Awakening, Closing Loops, and Changing Engagement

Colleges and Universities across the country closed campuses in March 2020 as the coronavirus spread worldwide and transformed into a pandemic. It became evident when the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made recommendations for social distancing that would not allow the return of normalcy on campus for the rest of the semester. Professors and instructors across the world made the transition from their face-to-face classes to emergency remote teaching in one of the most disrupted academic semesters in decades. Students transitioned with their professors into one of the most unprecedented shifts in academia that has ever been accomplished by going completely online in a matter of weeks. The term Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) was coined by the academic community early on to signify the contrast between the quick transition of face-to-face courses to an online platform and a high-quality online education. Expectations for educator traits in this unprecedented time included flexibility, adaptability, and a willingness to meet students where they can. With lack of shared governance, institutional administration required faculty to attend professional development trainings and design to develop new online courses to transition their ERT to quality online courses during the 2020 summer months. In this phenomenological dissertation study, seven community college faculty members express their experiences in the efforts they made in transitioning their ERT courses to quality online courses. This study revealed what components of the professional development were impactful and prompted lasting change, and what lessons were learned that should be avoided.

A Study of Factors Influencing the Use of the DingTalk Online Lecture Platform in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Online classes quickly became a hot topic in education during the effort to prevent and manage the COVID-19 outbreak. This paper is of great value in analyzing the factors influencing online delivery from a socially acceptable perspective, using the online DingTalk platform course as the research target. The researchers of this paper used a questionnaire to establish the conceptual basis of the survey based on the technology acceptance model (TAM), and developed the corresponding survey questions. The questionnaire was distributed to 528 respondents, of which 495 were valid data samples;furthermore, the sample efficiency of the returned questionnaire was 93.75%. The data were analyzed by SPSSAU software for reliability (Cronbach alpha: 0.967). For the purposes of assessing validity, ANOVA was used, and the SEM structural ANOVA was utilized in order to understand the impact of using the DingTalk platform for online classroom teaching, as well as to study user satisfaction with its use and to make relevant suggestions for continuing to use the online platform for classes in terms of campus management for online/offline hybrid teaching.

Shared Perspectives of Strength Among Black Women Social Work Educators in a Global Pandemic

Social work faculty have had to manage the complexities of delivering quality education amid the coronavirus pandemic. While some faculty had support from their institution, factors of service, scholarship, student advising, and technology capacity became meaningful lessons for faculty development. The authors relied on strength as a mechanism to navigate through this unprecedented time. Strong Black Woman (SBW) schema and resilience theory are the anchors of this continuum on opposite sides. The shared perspectives of three Black women faculty as (a) an instructor with an administrative appointment, (b) a teaching fellow, and (c) an adjunct instructor at varying institutions will demonstrate how the SBW schema and resilience theory have guided their ability to adapt to changes during the global pandemic.

Written/Unwritten. Diversity and the Hidden Truths of Tenure ed. by Patricia Matthew (review)

The University of Michigan denied tenure to four marginalized faculty members in 2007 and while wrestling with her own tenure challenges, Patricia Matthew brings these stories together. In many ways, these persons are marginalized from the intellectual community that graduate school fosters. [...]they are effectively rendered invisible to the campus community at large. The stigma attached to them, complicated by a healthy level of historical skepticism of social workers and mental health clinicians, may prevent scholars who struggle with anxiety and depression, for example, from availing themselves of any wellness resources and counseling services available to them on campus. In the age of COVID-19, the long-term effects of the disease for those who have survived it are yet to be fully understood and the impacts of the collective trauma are likely exacerbating for those who are already struggling with isolating physical conditions and mental health challenges.

Decolonizing Time, Knowledge, and Disability on the Tenure Clock

We consider the tenure clock's enmeshment in the neoliberal academy's settler colonial and ableist modes of organizing labor and valuing knowledge, modes in turn informed by heteropatriarchal spatiotemporal logics. The tenure clock in the settler academy relies on labor performed by those positioned outside of its time—such as those in temporary or semi-temporary positions, staff, graduate students, and undergraduate students. Our motivation in tracing these logics and formulating feminist strategies to undo them stems directly from observing "faculty with disabilities" at our university struggling against the tenure clock;as well as seemingly abled women faculty, faculty of color, and contingent faculty, who have strained against the academic clock and ended up debilitated in the process. We articulate ways in which more collaborative understandings of university culture and knowledge production might serve to challenge the peculiar temporalities produced by the tenure clock. Listening and learning at the intersections of feminist, Indigenous, and disability studies scholarship teaches us to work toward imagining a different approach to tenure, and from there, the way to a different academy.

Attunement in the Cracks: Feminist Collaboration and the University as Broken Machine

This essay takes the form of a dialogue between Natalie Loveless and Carrie Smith, both professors at a large western-Canadian research-intensive university undergoing restructuring prompted by budget cuts. Together they ask how feminist collaboration can work to resculpt academic political spaces. Though both agree that large-scale action is needed, they also argue for the value of insurgent, modest, local modes of collaborative resistance that operate in the cracks of the neoliberal university. Beginning from their experience navigating the dual threats of COVID-19 and radical budget cuts as professors in academic leadership positions, they make a claim for an anti-racist, feminist university that is responsive in its capacity to nurture generosity, care, and creativity. Together they invite readers to be attentive to the conditions necessary for any true critical collaboration to take place, listening for and attuning to what Sarah Sharma has called "brokenness" (2020)—those places where things are not working from the perspectives of patriarchal power and where those committed to feminist anti-racist/ableist/speciesist university spaces might want to linger.

Competition in american social work education during times of COVID-19: a midwestern case study

Competition to attract students for enrollment in American social work degree programs is intense. Program attributes (e.g. minimum grade point average, maximum transfer credits permitted, institutional tuition rate, and rankings) distinguish social work education programs in the United States. Determining which program attributes appeal to potential students could help increase a program's competitiveness in a crowded education marketplace. The COVID-19 pandemic is further intensifying recruitment of students to BSW programs. This research used a case study approach to compare admission attributes of 21 bachelor of social work programs (BSW) offered at 11 public and 10 private institutions located in one state that could be viewed as representative of American BSW programs. This paper compared attributes that differentiated these undergraduate social work programs, while exploring the potential impact of the pandemic on BSW student recruitment. Implications for social work education are discussed, including lessons learned that may be helpful to BSW faculty and staff responsible for student recruitment activities and related operations. Social work education program administrators and faculty could use this information to review recruitment and application processes and raise awareness of the burgeoning influence of reputational ranking services.

2022 CCCC Chair's Address: Writing (Studies) and Reality: Taking Stock of Labor, Equity, and Access in the Field

In a speech delivered at the virtual 2022 CCCC Annual Convention, Hassel talks about the professional rituals that CCCC members have come to rely on throughout their professional history. He focuses on three areas of the field to help them as a group of engaged educators think about the components of their work and make sense of them in this highly unstable point in time. He also looks at the past, present, and future of the field of composition, rhetoric, and writing studies.

Psychosocial effects of COVID-19 in Ecuadorian university professors

The objective of this work is to analyze the psychosocial effects of COVID-19 on Ecuadorian university professors, for which a quantitative research of descriptive and correlational nature was developed. Two instruments were applied, based on the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scales and the Burnout questionnaire to the selected sample, in three public universities of easy access and linkage with the researchers. The population consisted of professors with appointment: 682 from the Technical University of Manabí, 678 from the Lay University Eloy Alfaro de Manabí, and 131 from the State University of Southern Manabí, from which a sample of 246, 246 and 98 professors was selected respectively. From the results it is derived that depression, anxiety, and stress were configured in psychosocial effects, which have had an impact during the COVID-19 pandemic on the professors of the universities studied, due to the pressure originated by new emerging methodological structures, the acquisition of other competences associated to technology, health and the risks of contagion, death and by the pedagogical attention through virtuality, unexpectedly arisen in times of pandemic.

Faculty experiences teaching in an MBA program in the context of COVID-19 a sensemaking approach

The Sensemaking framework is often utilized when disruptive events create ambiguity and force individuals to make sense of things differently, personally and professionally, by "structuring the unknown" (Waterman, 1990, p.41). By way of example, the COVID-19 pandemic was a significant disruptor to the education sector. Institutional decisions driven by the initial crisis kept daily functions and the educational process moving forward in 2020 by faculty members leveraging existing technology to continue teaching their students. The pandemic disrupted the daily routine of brick-and-mortar operations and many institutions' face-to-face delivery of academic content. The implications of the pandemic forced every faculty member to make sense of the health crisis in their own particular way based on their individual situation. Despite the disruptive jolt of the pandemic, it also provided faculty the opportunity for personal and professional growth as they reflected on themselves and the lessons they learned amid the pandemic.After several months of living in the experience of online learning and virtual engagement, faculty and students returned to brick-and-mortar institutions to resume their educational roles (Husserl, 1970). Questions regarding safety, responsibilities, lessons learned, innovation, and sustainability were top of mind as faculty members returned and shared the same space and place with their colleagues and students. As such, to capture the essence of the faculty's interpretation of their pandemic experience, Heidegger's (1962) phenomenological approach was employed to provide context and to help understand the faculty's personal experiences as they tried to reconcile their previous role of teaching and learning with their newfound utilization of technology in their courses. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)