Book: Technology-mediated Crisis Response in Language Studies
Chapter: 13. Predicting Success in Difficult Times: A Latent Class Analysis of World Language - Teachers’ Online Experience During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Blurb:
In chapter 13, Marta Tecedor and Inmaculada Gómez Soler make recommendations for teacher training based on a global survey-based Latent Class Analysis of language educators’ experience during the early days of ERTL. They classified participants into negative, neutral, and positive attitudes toward online education. Teachers with more experience tended to be more negative; teachers who received training during the pandemic tended to have a neutral rather than a negative attitude; and pre-K12 teachers were less positive than those teaching in higher education or language schools. The training that educators received was emergency training, that addressed mostly immediate needs and low-level skills and not the kind of deep understanding and reflection that is needed to change attitudes. As in other chapters (e.g., Gokool and Naidoo), educators reported challenges with motivation and designing engaging learning environments. Implied in Tecedor and Gómez Soler’s study is that a by-product of ERTL was a shift in attitudes and that those attitudes were influenced by pre-pandemic and thereby pre-crisis conditions. This is similar to the observations made by Landry and Hamel in part 2 of the book.