Book Description

This collection, which centres on the academic as teacher, grew out of the moment of unprecedented change that COVID-19 brought to the world in 2020, when our daily routine of teaching and learning was disrupted. Many of the chapters have a strongly narrative core, recounting the iterative, emergent and imperfect process of designing online courses for Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT). Told to and for other teachers, these stories matter because they transform experience – through reflection – into learning. This work thus contributes to emerging scholarship on pedagogy and disruption in higher education, with a specific focus on the Global South and the ongoing need for contextually relevant, transformative teaching at universities. Animating the collection is the question that preoccupied us during the pandemic: When all this is over, how do you want your teaching to be different? The authors take stock of what, as lecturers, we want to take with us from ERT and what we might want to leave behind – and work to collectively imagine new possibilities for teaching and learning along the continuum from face-to-face to blended, to fully online. This volume is an opportunity for us to keep sharing our innovations and reflecting on the shifts in teaching, learning, course design and assessment practices that occurred during COVID-19 and continue to reverberate beyond. Read together, the studies collected in this volume shed light on the broad and complex ecologies of pedagogic agency, frailty and resilience within which lecturers function as teachers in higher education in the South African context. They offer ideas born out of disruption that aim to support lecturers in similar contexts in developing a more just and equitable higher education. “Of the hundreds of new publications on pedagogy, politics and pandemics, this is easily one of the best available on innovation in higher education inside and since the disruption of those times. The power of reflection and the wisdom of practice combine to ensure the longevity of this remarkable text for university students, teachers and researchers alike. Simply outstanding work!” - Prof. Jonathan Jansen, Distinguished Professor, Stellenbosch University “Pedagogic Innovation Beyond Disruption provides a fascinating reflective perspective by educators in higher education on adapting their practices to manage teaching and learning online during the pandemic. The chapters in the book offer a rich tapestry of strategies and approaches that showcase how educators moved beyond a mere transfer of traditional teaching methods to an online format to ensure that their students remained engaged in their learning and felt cared for and supported online. As such, this book provides a thought-provoking and comprehensive exploration of innovative teaching and learning possibilities in higher education during the unprecedented disruption of the pandemic conditions.” - Dr Jennifer Feldman, Faculty of Education, Stellenbosch University