Insights into the impact of the pandemic on early career researchers:
the case of remote teaching
Abstract
The study presents comparative qualitative findings from a longitudinal
exploration of the impact of the pandemic on early career researchers
(ECRs) from the sciences and social sciences. Using qualitative
methodologies, it focuses on the increasing demands of remote teaching
made on ECRs and the potentially negative effects these had on their
research. The study also sheds light on ECRs’ country-specific teaching
commitments and the extent to which these play a role in their
assessment. Data comes from the first of three rounds of in-depth
interviews, conducted with 177 ECRs from China, France, Malaysia,
Poland, Russia, Spain, UK and US. The main findings, which are set
against the published literature, were: a) over half ECRs teach and most
of them are assessed on their teaching; b) there are significant
differences between countries, with, for instance, French researchers
hardly teaching and nearly all Polish researchers doing so; c) around a
quarter of ECRs felt research was hindered during the pandemic because
online teaching was increasingly demanding of their time; d) a
preliminary analysis of ECRs’ gender-specific attitude to teaching in
the pandemic-incurred new realities indicates that women experience more
difficulties.