Reviving and Reinstating Adult-Educators' Agency within Adult and Post-Secondary Programmes

In this article we reflect on the challenges we have encountered regarding our teaching and learning practices as adult educators during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through narrative reflections, we grapple with this rapidly changing teaching and learning environment. Our collection of adult and post-secondary programmes were designed to be delivered in an online classroom mode and traditionally have been offered with limited face-to-face interactions. Given this circumstance, we felt equipped and ready to confront the move to remote teaching. As the pandemic weeks turned into months, we found ourselves needing support from each other because of unprecedented pedagogical challenges. We asked ourselves the following fundamental question: how do we purposefully adapt our teaching and learning in a fluctuating, fluid, and stressful environment? We provide insights into our experiences and strategies, concluding that, ultimately, we turned to educator and learner agency as a foundational pedagogical tool. Analysis revealed three overarching themes embedded within educator and learner agency which included retrospective reconstruction when assessing curriculum, reciprocal anxieties when supporting personalised learning environments, and mental preparation versus provision when engaging overloaded learners.