“Suspending Classes Without Pauses for Learning”: What Do Chinese Secondary Teachers Think About Remote Teaching Following the Pandemic?

Background

Online teaching and learning were not a new thing in China when COVID-19 plagued the country. Remote instruction has been promoted and put into practice before the year of 2020. It was viewed and advocated as an effective way to equip the younger generation with the technological and media literacy skills and narrow down the digital divide that gradually became a serious social and educational issue (Ding, Niu, & Han, 2010). After the COVID-19 outbreak, actions were taken at the government level to ensure teachers and student to have easy access to internet and online learning resources (Zhan, Huo, Yao & Zhong, 2021, p.2). Teacher training on remote instruction was also offered by the school districts and school at the provincial and local levels. However, Covid-19 created such a drastically different social environment for teachers, leaving most of them feeling underprepared and stressed (Huang, Tlili, Chang, Zhang, Nascimbeni, & Burgos, 2020).

Even with the long-advocated remote instruction in China, there was research evidence since decades ago showing that teachers were reluctant to teach with technology (Collins & Halversont, 2010). Teachers’ reluctance with technology can be explained by a myriad of reasons. One reason is related to teacher’s negative perception and experience toward technology use in the classrooms. Research showed that teacher attitudes and perceptions of technologies, their experiences with technology, as well as the educational policy are likely to be key factors in the successful integration of learning technologies (Cope & Ward, 2002, p.72). On the other, remote teaching has inherent challenges for both teachers and students, including but not limited to low motivation of students and stronger needs for teachers to create student-centered classrooms (Schoor & Bannert, 2011). Studies on technology use in China pointed out further that Chinese teachers tend to use technology mainly for teacher-centered purpose (Li & Ni, 2011). While teachers who preferred more student-centered approaches are more likely to use technology with sophisticated usages, teachers who preferred more teacher-centered approaches mainly uses technology to support a predominantly teacher-driven class with minimum interaction between students (Rao, 1996).