A Novel Framework for Facilitating Emergency Remote Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

In today’s educational landscape educators and administrators are confronted with unprecedented challenges as they have to hastily move education online. Emergency remote teaching is a response to this crisis. However, the research about the efficacy of remote teaching is scarce because of COVID-19 which is a rapidly evolving situation and also because of a lack of clarity about what constitutes instruction during an emergency. Moreover, the actual practices for emergency remote teaching are unclear in the context of Kuwait. This study aims to investigate how educators are implementing emergency remote instruction in order to reshape education during the COVID-19 pandemic in Kuwait where traditional instructional approaches and practices are dominant. Using a case study research design, the researchers delve into educators’ perspectives by collecting qualitative data from interviews. The results indicate that educators used multiple pedagogical approaches to enhance student participation and learning. It also revealed the problematic aspects of remote or distance education. Finally, the results were used to construct and present a Novel Remote Learning Framework, which is an empirically- grounded, theoretically-informed conceptualization of emergency remote instruction which is expected to reshape instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic.