FRAMING THE OTHER WORLD: NARRATING SCARS OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN MALAYSIAN EDUCATIONAL CONTEXT

Abstract

The COVID-19 outbreak, which started in March 2020, has affected education in various ways. The closure of schools and universities worldwide has forced both teachers and learners to abandon physical teaching and learning. Instead, they have to adapt themselves to remote online classes. Literature education is no exception. The need to create lively, fun and interactive literature lessons suddenly became impossible. Instead, students were thrown into the world of isolation, fear and helplessness. For the first time in history, literature lessons worldwide have undergone an abrupt change under a new norm. This qualitative study attempts to explore students’ perceptions of COVID-19 pandemic. Data was gathered from written narratives of the midterm assignment of 30 undergraduate TESL students in the Faculty of Psychology and Education, Universiti Malaysia Sabah during Semester 2 session 2021/22. Employing the premise mooted by Ahlberg (2021) who considers the pandemic as a crisis and the process of teaching and learning should take into consideration the factors of context, experience and emotion on learners’ sides, the eBook entitled The Other World was used as a frame narrative for reading activity. Next, students were required to choose two short stories from the volumes and produce their own narrations in dealing with the pandemic. A qualitative inductive content analysis of students’ narratives resulted in 5 codes indicating students’ perception of COVID-19 pandemic. Students have mixed reactions in narrating their personal experiences during the pandemic. Most expressed states of despair and depression, and their readiness to adapt themselves to the new social norms. Others have expressed their concerns for security and safety, while a small number related their experience to the new educational norm. The rest of them related their experiences in retrospect of close family ties and gratitude. The results of this study suggest the use of frame narrative technique among hesitant or problematic ESL students in dealing with a crisis.