A Wake-Up Call: Equity, Inequality and Covid-19 Emergency Remote Teaching and Learning
This article is an example of an insightful (and influential) collaborative reflection conducted by a group of South African academics in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The example not only shows that reflective writing does not have to be an individual activity, but also highlights the power of reflection as a critical lens.
The nexus of these transformational issues requires a new way of seeing and not unseeing what needs to remain visible. This is where the hope lies. The pandemic has been an MRI exposing the social bones (Roy 2020), an X-ray making it possible ‘to see all the broken places’ (Wright 2020). Thus, our reflections of Emergency Remote Teaching and Learning (ERTL) in this paper illuminate multiple and coexisting forms of inequality in higher education. While this might seem hopeless at times, recognising care as repair embraces the notion that ‘when people [and indeed systems] confront their failures, they have the opportunity to mend them’ (Wright 2020). Clear analysis of the complex shape of the terrain is essential, as is resistance. Harder to grow, yet fundamental, are the seeds of community, collaboration and commitment which can restore and recreate a deeply damaged sector.