Contributor long abstract:

The current Covid-19 pandemic has clearly demonstrated that public schooling in many developing countries, including Kyrgyzstan, is deeply vulnerable to crisis situations and unprepared effectively to adjust to new realities on the foundation of a long outdated teaching and learning infrastructure. The impact of school closures and the transfer to online schooling on the overall teaching process and quality, and students’ learning and wellbeing have not yet been studied in Kyrgyzstan. Only erratic reports in mass media and social media on the relevant topics provide us with a fragmentary idea of the overall situation of public education during the pandemic months, and leaves many questions open. Of particular concern remains how the process of online schooling was implemented by teachers in public schools without institutionalized digital pedagogical tools, virtual exchange platforms, appropriate technical infrastructure, and teaching resources. This study aims at establishing comprehensive national level data to understand the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on teaching activities of public school teachers in the Kyrgyz Republic. The study is organized around the central research questions: “How did Covid-19 pandemic affect teaching practices, experiences and attitudes among teaching of primary and secondary schools in the Kyrgyz republic? What are lessons learned and prospects for future?”. It employs an exploratory sequential mixed methods design with three phases of data collection (QUAL-QUANT-QUAL). In the first phase, the primary qualitative data was collected through the teachers' diaries, which provided inductive dominant and specific themes that were further used as a framework for developing the primary quantitative data collection instrument in the second phase. The latter involves collecting data through an online survey tool, which has an objective to test predetermined assumptions via a set of closed questions and investigate particular issues or topic areas via open-ended questions. In the third phase of data collection, selected participants will be invited to participate in expert interviews to better understand and explore details of the survey results.

Currently, the study is in its second phase (collecting quantitative data through an online survey). While analyzing the data from the first phase of data collection, the research group became increasingly aware of how systematic and multi-faceted the problem of teaching in public schools during the pandemic actually is, and that teachers, as the primary knowledge facilitators, are basically left alone to muddle through and manage this critical situation without appropriate methodological, technical, financial, and administrative support.