Discussions of higher education teaching are often shrouded with narratives highlighting common and regular teaching obligations and situations rather than extreme and spectacular examples. However, as seen during the pandemic, teaching in times of crisis moves beyond what is needed in times of stability. Indeed, the pandemic reminds us that it is pivotal for teachers to be able to navigate different and sometimes unknown contexts (Christensen et al., 2022; Jung et al., 2021) while at the same time adding, what to some may come across as something extra to teaching in terms of caring about, and for, others (Tronto, 2010). This paper moves beyond the Covid-19 pandemic as a point in time to the pandemic as a case of disrupted education involving sudden changes to the educational framework (García-Morales et al., 2021). Our paper focuses on what we might learn from the pandemic in terms of ways to support teachers in times of disrupted teaching. This paper is written to directly respond to the NW27 call for studies of ’teaching and learning in diverse contexts’. 

Studies of higher education teaching and learning during the Covid-19 pandemic have produced substantial accounts that address broad issues of digitisation of higher education teaching and learning. Transitioning to remote emergency teaching was, by large, seen as an organisational and technological accomplishment. However, as adapting to and appropriating new contexts cannot take place independently from human thought and actions, this paper seeks to rehumanise transitions by focusing on the role of teachers’ identity and agency. Whereas identity refers to teachers’ identification with a specific group or as a self-image we construct  (Kreber, 2010) and involves an emotional attachment to particular roles intertwined with sociality, culture and power relations  (Elliott, 2019), agency comprises humans’ capacity and willingness to act and cause actions or changes (Goller & Harteis, 2017). While teacher agency is expected, it is rarely explored or supported in ways that move beyond didactical decision-making. In that sense, then, narrow accounts of teachers’ agency and identity signal a trend of approaching teaching as an individual construct and teachers individually responsible for making teaching work “no matter what”. 

From the outset, this paper discusses what is needed to navigate new and disrupted teaching contexts from a teacher's perspective and what higher education can do to support teachers. In particular, the present paper presents findings from a study of teachers’ identity and agency in higher education in times of disrupted education, which explores the following research question: What supports teachers’ agency and identity in complex interventions and times of disrupted education?

The paper addresses the question through an examination of Covid-19 and teachers’ transition to remote emergency teaching. Our method can be described as a review based on two review approaches: The systematic review and the realist review. First, the systematic review informed our review screening strategy, involving the identification of a broad search strategy and inclusion and exclusion criteria for subsequent screening of the retrieved studies. For our review, we targeted studies focused on teachers in higher education, identity or agency, and Covid-19. We included studies published between January 2020 and 2022 in various formats, such as journal articles, conference papers, and reports. Next, we used an analytical approach inspired by realist reviews (Pawson, 2002) for data extraction, interpretation, and synthesis of included studies. Generally, realist reviews are explorative rather than judgemental in focus. Rather than seeking evidence that interventions works (Wong, 2011), they aim to identify significant mechanisms underpinning how interventions work and what works. Realist reviews are also characterised by seeking to uncover underlying theories that explain patterns of human behaviour identified in the studies included in the review (Pawson, 2002). The studies included in this paper pointed to a pattern of a strong relationship between external interaction processes and internal psychological processes. Based on this, Illeris’s (2018) model of adult learning in working life was used to synthesise findings.

Using 27 included studies as the backbone, our review sheds light on some underpinning dynamics affecting higher education teachers’ identity and agency when transitioning to new and uncertain teaching contexts. By attending to these dynamics, we raise three broader concerns: (a) our study suggests that the way teaching in new contexts ’comes together’ is a nuanced process involving a complex interplay between teachers’ knowledge and skills, emotions and motivation, and the space for integration and cooperation. Not all these dimensions are successfully supported or cultivated in higher education. In particular, the interest of universities appears to be on learning new content and skills and less on emotions and the space for integration. (b) As we examine what needs to be learned to appropriate a new teaching context, we find the competences and knowledge needed are diverse and highly situated. This invites us to question the current role of mainstream competences frameworks in higher education, such as digital competences, comprising fixed dimensions unrelated to the specific situations in which they should be adopted. (c) There is a tendency for regular teaching and stable contexts in higher education to occupy a symbolic space where uncertainty has little bearing on the development of teaching. This study raises the challenge of how we can ’think and do otherwise’ concerning this issue. Based on the study conducted, it seems pivotal to keep in mind that preparing for disrupted teaching requires a different set of competences than the competences necessary for teaching in regular teaching contexts. In other words, practices based on stability may not be sufficient to support teachers’ practices in times of disruption. Moreso, it requires universities to adopt a more holistic approach to teachers. In conclusion, we raise the challenge of how higher education teaching and teaching as work may be organised differently.

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