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Humanism is a significant factor that is considered in all facets of human beings as it respects the dignity of human beings irrespective of human demographic characteristics such as gender, age, ethnicity, and similar others (Ullah & Atta, 2020). However, it is explained from different perspectives in different contexts. In the context of education, the humanistic dimension is one key part among agentic, cognitive and humanistic dimensions of learner-centered education (Starkey, 2019). The dimension of humanistic education focuses on recognizing every individual as a human being with an emphasis on relationships, creating space for creativity, and focusing on meaning construction (Kazanjian & Choi, 2016). It includes teachers’ knowledge that is to be in line with the student’s interests, enthusiasms, and aspirations (Stam, 2017) so that it helps to deliver their teaching byapplying culturally responsive and relational pedagogies, and acknowledging different ways of knowing (Starkey, 2019). As it is also a crucial factor of learner-centered instruction (Giinting et al., 2013), the learner-centered framework with the inclusion of technology provides a foundation for the transformation of education. Further, in teaching and learning activities, the humanistic approach helps students to develop the mathematical and general competencies that allow them to become educated and intelligent individuals (Cibulskaite, 2013).
In online classes, teachers' humanistic roles are crucial even more for encouraging students, exercising the value of equality, emotional behavior, and counseling them, which is underexplored and underdetermined during the COVID-19 pandemic (Talukdar, 2021; Araq, 2021). Students may have anxiety regarding getting infection and continuity of education, and psycho-social problems. During the pandemic, students might have suffered from negativity due to social isolation and a lack of physical interaction with peers and teachers (Adnan & Anwar, 2020). So, an effective communication with students may engage in the study (Alawamleh et al., 2020) and be an outlet for their negativity. In such a situation, the humanistic role of teachers can play a crucial role in the student’s engagement in learning and promoting achievement during the time of the pandemic.
Among all the subjects, mathematics is taken as a complex subject due to highlighted causes of poor student-relationship, or nonconductive learning environment (Kaur, 2017), and the students have low learning performance in mathematics in Nepal (ERO, 2019) where it is low in overall achievement in higher educational institutions like Tribhuvan University (Acharya et al., 2022). This subject is perceived negatively and felt as a subject of anxiety especially by the low-performing students of Nepal (Kunwar, 2021). Moreover, numerous issues have been discussed in mathematics teaching and learning, such as those related to gender, ethnicity, social justice, inequity, or native language, that could be addressed by teachers' roles, such as being aware of such issues, acting wisely and tactfully, questioning the status quo structure of the society, or creating socially equitable and just classrooms (Panthi & Belbase, 2017), which largely overarches the humanistic role of teachers. There are several problems in teaching mathematics online (Khanal, Joshi, et al. 2022, Khanal, Joshi, Adhikari et al. 2022, Adhikari et al. 2022), and the digital pedagogical skills of mathematics teachers in teaching mathematics online is poor (Joshi et al., 2023). Performance of students in mathematics is decreasing (ERO, 2019, 2022). For improving the existing mathematics performance and addressing the problems of teaching mathematics onlineone of the ways might be the teachers’ humanistic role in teaching and learning of mathematics (Nath et al, 2017) which is under-explored in the Nepali educational context. When a teacher behaves students with the dignity, integrity and freedom, they (students) become motivated and pay attention during teaching and learning, and that eventually contributes to better learning performance (Hornstra et al., 2021, Cavanagh et al., 2018; Schneider et al., 2018). Considering this fact, for guiding this study, the following research questons were formulated: