Leading and Teaching During Pandemic Uncertainties: Voices and Experience of Thai Liberal Arts Administrators-Instructors
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The COVID-19 outbreak in March 2020 necessitated an abrupt and unplanned transition from regular face-to-face classrooms to online platforms, creating unique advantages and constraints for liberal arts instruction in the Thai undergraduate context. While various studies (Kawinkoonlasate, 2020; Vanpetch & Sattayathamrongthian, 2020; Watson Todd, 2020) have explored the impact of pandemic disruption on teachers and learners, only a few have examined the issue from the viewpoints of Thai university administrators. This study investigates liberal arts administrators-instructors’ experiences, perceptions, and challenges during the sudden shift to online learning and to report their thoughts on policy planning and potential possibilities for expanding foreign language instruction through affordances of online technology. The author interviewed ten administrators-instructors in a faculty of liberal arts of a Thai public research university: administrators (the dean, two associate deans, one assistant dean), four department chairs, and two curriculum committee members. Results showed that participants encountered a novel management experience, as they had to implement and continually revise contingency plans to handle three main challenges: the lack of infrastructure for online teaching, abrupt change in language teaching pedagogy, and dealing with students’ concerns over mental health, study abroad, and internship. Moreover, the study results indicate that while administrators-instructors perceived emergency remote teaching (ERT) as a kairotic moment to integrate technology into their language classrooms, some also saw technology as a threat to job security. These findings suggest a need for administrators and instructors of liberal arts to develop faculty-wide critically innovative principles, policy, and approach to teaching that moves beyond the on-campus VS. off-campus dichotomy of course delivery toward a more fused course model and paradigm, regardless of the status or outcome of the pandemic.
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