Dancing with Covid: Choreographing examinations in pandemic times

In this paper, we explore the improvisations made in examination practices in higher education during the pandemic of 2020. Drawing on STS, we start from the theoretical assumption that examinations constitute an obligatory passage point in universities and colleges: a sacred point which students ne...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:European educational research journal EERJ 2021-07, Vol.20 (4), p.403-422
Main Authors: Alarcón López, Cristina, Decuypere, Mathias, Dey, Joyeeta, Gorur, Radhika, Hamilton, Mary, Lundahl, Christian, Sundström Sjödin, Elin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Access to Computers
At Risk Students
Barriers
College Faculty
College Students
Computer Assisted Testing
COVID-19
Cultural Differences
Disease Control
Educational Technology
Emergency Programs
Evaluation Methods
Examination practices
Foreign Countries
Higher Education
Internet
ontological choreography
Pandemics
School Closing
STS
Student Evaluation
Student Role
Teacher Role
Technology Uses in Education
Testing
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:In this paper, we explore the improvisations made in examination practices in higher education during the pandemic of 2020. Drawing on STS, we start from the theoretical assumption that examinations constitute an obligatory passage point in universities and colleges: a sacred point which students need to pass if they want to gain recognized qualifications. We base our analysis of higher education examinations on cases from six countries around the world: Australia, Belgium, Chile, India, Sweden and the UK. We use the analytical heuristic of choreography to follow the movements, tensions and resistance of the ‘emergency examinations’ as well as the re-orderings of actors and stages that have inevitably occurred. In our analytical stories we see the interplay between the maintenance of fixed and sacred aspects of examinations and the fluidity of improvisations aimed at meeting threats of spreading Covid-19. These measures have forced the complex network of examinations both to reinforce some conventional actors and to assemble new actors and stages, thus creating radically new choreographies. Although higher education teaching and didactics are being framed as a playground for pedagogical innovation with digital technologies, it is clear from our data that not all educational activities can be so easily replicated.
ISSN:1474-9041
1474-9041
DOI:10.1177/14749041211022130