Lived experiences of non-education graduate teachers in teaching Mathematics during the pandemic

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic caused a huge impact in the lives of many, especially to the people in the teaching arena. Both seasoned and new teachers, who are non-education graduates, met a plethora of personal and professional challenges that shaped their human perspective. Nevertheless, the pandemic charged these teachers with significant efforts for transformation that eventually change educational landscape. This phenomenological study described the realizations and explored the challenges and coping mechanisms of non-education graduate teachers teaching mathematics, focusing on their experiences with the new learning modality during the pandemic. Using semi-structured interviews to four (4) purposively selected informants, the researcher was able to extract themes that described the informants' lived experiences in teaching Mathematics during the pandemic. The result of this qualitative study, through the extracted themes via thematic analysis, revealed that these teachers struggled with professional, personal, and mental health-related issues as the transition to virtual and modular learning necessitated significant adjustments in teaching strategies, including issues related to student motivation and engagement. It is then recommended that all stakeholders be fully aware of the efforts of these non-education graduate mathematics teachers to deliver and address learning gaps despite the pandemic. Pedagogical and theoretical implications were discussed in the study.