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 teacher-trainees 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 teaching-learning 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.