Influence of Home-environment on Online Teaching-Learning during COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown among Teacher-trainees

Abstract

Purpose: The ongoing circumstances due to overall COVID-19 pandemic and the
subsequent lockdown made the institutions and the teacher-trainees dependent and involved
in the innovative teaching-learning methods. The compelling circumstances mandated the
involvement of teacher-trainees in online teaching-learning from home as the pedagogical
tool as well as an obligatory part of their curriculum. So, this paper attempts to study the
views of teacher-trainees for the current transition to online teaching-learning and the
influence of home-environment on it during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.
Design/ Methodology/ Approach: A questionnaire comprising 35 items on a Likert scale,
was formulated to study the views of teacher-trainees on the influence of home-environment
on online teaching-learning process. This study was conducted on a sample of 271 teachertrainees from different colleges/universities from Uttar Pradesh (India), using snowball
non-probability sampling. The questionnaire was circulated and administered over a period
of one month. The study employed quantitative descriptive survey method to identify the
influence of home-environment on online teaching-learning process.
Findings: The data revealed that close to three-fourths of the participants (73.06%)
responded that they had a good/positive experience of online teaching-learning from home
in the course of their training/internship during COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. About 72%
participants reported that they had an overall increased workload due to online teachinglearning from home during lockdown in comparison to the situation prior to lockdown.
About three-fourths (74.54%) of the teacher-trainees responded that learning online is easy,
but teaching online is difficult from home. Two-thirds (67.16%) of the participants reported
experiencing stress engaging in online teaching-learning from home during COVID-19.
Close to 60% (59.41%) respondents strongly agreed that their families supported them while
teaching-learning online from home during COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. About two
thirds of the respondents (65.69%) recommend the continuation of online teaching-learning
for the school students, and a similar proportion (65.68%) were found to be in favour of
continuation of online teaching-learning post-COVID-19 for teacher training courses.
Originality/ Value: The paper is the original research work based on the primary data
collected from the teacher-trainees of Uttar Pradesh, India. This study will provide useful
insights into the challenges of online teaching-learning and has implications for researching
teacher-trainees’ use of technology in the future. The present study suggests to incorporate
and adopt Blended learning methodologies in the school education and teacher training
programmes.