The experience of imposed digitalization of education provision across sectors: Comparative autoethnographic experiences through a Foucauldian lens

Abstract

Worldwide, over the course of the global COVID-19 pandemic, major disruption to schooling and education provision at all levels has presented governments, school leaders, faculty, teachers, parents and students with a host of challenges. These challenges also brought increased attention to how ill-prepared education institutions were to ‘pivot’ from face-to-face teaching and learning to online forms of remote provision. In this paper, we will explore how this imposed digitalization affected leadership and governance from the experience of the various stakeholders involved. In exploring the imposed digitalization of education provision across educational sectors in two different geographical and cultural contexts, Malta and Turkey, we utilize a critical autoethnography to question how power and knowledge reflexively generated our actions and interpretations, as well as critically reflect on our own practice as researchers. As researchers, through reflexivity and introspection, we engage in self-study as participants, recognizing our interpretation of facts as shaped by our sociocultural circumstances. Regarding education institutions as a key test site for digital technologies and a ripe field for critical educational research, we thus explore the leadership and governance experiences of this imposed digitalization and its ensuing effects through the prism of social theory, specifically a Foucauldian perspective using his ‘trident’ of problematization, critique and scepticism. Our autoethnographic exploration of imposed digitalization across distinct education sectors in diverse cultural contexts has implications for theory, policy and practice.

Introduction

Education and schooling are increasingly seen as ‘fundamental elements’ of a modern society at both the cultural and political level. Worldwide, over the course of the global COVID-19 pandemic, major disruption to schooling and education provision at all levels has presented governments, school leaders, faculty, teachers, parents and students with a host of challenges. Educational leadership at both compulsory and higher education levels was disrupted in multiple and unprecedented ways, including the organization of work, support of staff, students and parents as well as implementation and management of digital technologies to a scale never seen before.

This rapid, unprecedented reform unfolded ‘out of necessity rather than deliberate and thoughtful planning’ (Netolicky, 2020: 394), with the mass closure of education institutions leading to the rise of ‘pandemic pedagogies’ (Williamson et al., 2020: 108) as a global norm since the opening months of 2020 to the point that distance education, remote teaching and online instruction acquired a renewed significance, defining education globally (Harris, 2020). School leaders have had no choice but to engage in sudden and rapid re-skilling to lead the transition to online learning (Arar et al., 2023) while exercising school leadership to and from a hybrid online and at times, simultaneous in situ environment. Consequently, school leaders have experienced a more unstable, fluid work environment due to less predictability in their work role coupled with an increasing loss in their job clarity (Arnold et al., 2021). Adapting a European policy perspective, Zancajo et al. (2022) argue that education policy responses to the COVID-19 crisis have been mainly articulated around three areas: the digitalization of the education system, tackling educational inequalities and promoting teachers’ development.

Before the pandemic, digital technologies for education played a role in teaching and learning provision as a reflection of the needs of an emerging digital knowledge economy. While educational institutions were not impervious to the role of digital technologies in education, technologies occupied a different role pre-pandemic, one that although was connected to notions of innovation and essential in fostering appropriate skills for a 21st century workforce played a comparatively less central role in the different components of the educational system, practice and leadership. The pandemic disrupted the education system globally, with school leaders’ perspectives shifting as they became open (and encouraged) to trying new modalities and skills, such as using digital tools. They also became more flexible in developing new and/or enhanced leadership practice, such as digital instructional/technological leadership (Yildiz Sal and Gocen, 2022) including visionary leadership, excellence in professional practice, digital age learning culture, digital citizenship and systemic improvement.

The ‘digital divide’ has been a major key player in discrepancies among students’ home-schooling experiences. The less affluent and digitally literate families are, the further their students are left behind (Tam and El-Azar, 2020), with the pandemic-induced school closures highlighting disparities in access to digital devices and the Internet connectivity. Consequently, certain children have been denied the opportunity to learn in the home-schooling period. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, 2020) thus draws schools’ attention to technology-assisted teaching and learning that amplify existing inequalities in access and quality of learning further. They also point out that although technology can amplify teachers’ work, it can never replace them. These novel leadership challenges have also brought increased attention to how ill-prepared schools were to ‘pivot’ from face-to-face teaching and learning to online forms of remote schooling. The pandemic has highlighted inconsistencies in teacher preparedness for the shift to remote teaching in terms of teachers’ digital competence and the seeming absence of any recognized digital pedagogy within their current practice (Brown et al., 2021).

The issue of digital power, and digital poverty in school education were highlighted (Ferris et al., 2022). Limited access to digital infrastructure, equipment, education and training has a direct correlation on life experiences and opportunities (UNICEF, 2017). On the other hand, there are several factors that determine whether one has access or not to digital capital, mainly finance, training and knowledge, as well as the supporting infrastructure (Donaghy, 2021). Educational technology, and its prominent role in continued schooling provision during the pandemic, and afterwards has indeed not only sharpened the attainment gap, but also brought to the fore a new kind of ‘disadvantaged’ student category due to the digital divide. Learning from home during periods of school closure led to a significant acceleration in procedures and practices for digital learning. A review of international and European countries’ policy documents (Zancajo et al., 2022) highlights that whilst policy did not substantially differ from the pre-pandemic digitalization push, the implementation timeframe certainly did. COVID-19 was ‘a catalyst to accelerate pre-existing digitization policies in education systems’ (Zancajo et al., 2022: 119). Strategies for remote education were prioritized with support for digital learning platforms and digital pedagogy made available like never before; digital assessment posing ‘a real challenge to educational institutions’ (Babbar and Gupta, 2021: 476).

The new modus operandi of school leadership triggered by the pandemic is ‘distributed, digital, networked and dependent on technological infrastructure’ (Harris and Jones, 2022: 107). This contributes indirectly to fostering teacher leadership if the ways of using digital leadership in the classroom are improved and promoted, by empowering and enlightening teachers on such matters (AlAjmi, 2022). Indeed, COVID-19 provided a unique opportunity for teacher leadership to develop as teachers played a vital role in the transition from in-person learning to remote learning during the school closure period (Babbar and Gupta, 2021), thus fostering their agency and autonomy away from the usual scenario of measured performance, surveillance and compliance (Netolicky, 2020).

All over the world, education is undergoing substantial changes in the wake of rapid technological developments. However, this is not happening according to the promises and the impact of technological determinism (Landri, 2019). And in the light of recent global phenomena, it has been determined by a global health state of emergency on top of the other forces of neoliberalism, new public management, accountability and standardization in the areas of educational leadership and policy. As our world is becoming ever more digitized, the educational sector is increasingly infused with digital games, apps, websites, social media and learning environments. Decuypere at al. (2021) argue that the Covid-19 pandemic, and associated measures of social distancing and school closures all over the world, have accelerated this digitization, triggering an urgent need for critical, up-close scrutiny of how this digitization is reshaping the worlds of education, more specifically in our case educational leadership theories and practices. Landri (2019) reiterates that digital technologies are changing how education is delivered, practised and managed, while delineating how the investments in digital platforms and data in education policy and practice are becoming, as a matter of fact, ‘uncontested worldwide recipes’ for the improvement of educational systems and of their performances (OECD, 2016).

Regarding education institutions as a key test site for digital technologies and a ripe field for critical educational research, through critical autoethnography, we adopt a research direction that is informed by the application of social theory to the exploration of digital technologies as a phenomenon worth researching in the context of schools, thus aiming to unearth questions of (em)power(ment), (in)justice, (in)equalities and cultural practices that are implicit to the structures education stakeholders at various levels inhabited during the pandemic and are still inhabiting as a result. We will thus explore the leadership and governance experiences of this imposed digitalization and its ensuing effects through the prism of social theory, in our case Foucauldian theory, that is outlined in the following section. Our distinct geographical research contexts did not happen by choice but by naturalization as they were the homeland settings where we experienced the pandemic digitalization phenomenon in our leadership roles. We come together as academics with practitioner leadership experience and expertise in our autoethnographic accounts in order to reflect upon the imposed digitalization on leadership and governance.

Applying social theory: Foucault’s ‘trident’

Regarding education institutions as a key test site for digital technologies and a ripe field for critical educational research, we adopt a research direction that is informed by the application of social theory to the exploration of digital technologies as a phenomenon worth researching in the context of schools, thus aiming to unearth questions of (em)power(ment), (in)justice, (in)equalities and cultural practices that are implicit to the structures education stakeholders at various levels inhabited during the pandemic and are still inhabiting as a result. We will thus explore the leadership and governance experiences of this imposed digitalization and its ensuing effects through the prism of social theory, specifically a Foucauldian perspective using his ‘trident’ of problematization, critique and scepticism, together with his theorizations about power relations and the panoptical ‘gaze’, especially given the proliferation of the digital gaze in practitioners’ and students’ lives throughout the pandemic and beyond.

The main tools that Foucault provides for engagement with educational discourse are scepticism, critique and problematization, representing a very powerful professional ethos for education professionals who operate within schools at various systemic and leadership levels (Gillies, 2012). Ethos is regarded as a way of being and behaviour, ‘a mode of being for the subject, along with a certain way of acting, a way visible to others’ (Foucault, 2000b: 286). Scepticism (Veyne, 2010: 1–2) encompasses the vocalization and application of doubt to the significance of stated purposes, objectives and goals, doubt as to the effectiveness of the chosen modus operandi, doubt as to the precision and reliability of claims, doubt as to the stated impetus, interests and purposes of relevant persons, doubt as to the value and rationality of chosen principles and concepts, doubt as to the disposition and status of knowledge, and doubt as to the nature of reality. Critique incorporates challenging assumptions, more specifically, the questioning of all the above about which scepticism is expressed. Gillies (2013: 23) captures it in this manner, ‘Scepticism is the stance, and critique is the activity; scepticism the adverb and critique the verb’. Consequently, problematization may be regarded as the function of critique. It leads to reconsideration and modification through the raising of problems and queries about the status quo of a particular practice or discourse, however ingrained it may be. Critique is thus the means through which problematization can unfold due to the ensuing identification of problems. Foucault’s trident thus provides both academics within the ELMA (educational leadership, management and administration) field but more so education practitioners with a gamut of professional tools to delve into their own practice and the whole educational landscape to instigate meaningful reform.

Gillies (2013) demonstrates the value of Foucault’s trident as a tool for reflecting on educational discourses, ‘Given the scale of the educational leadership literature and the relatively small amount of questioning voices raised against it, it seems eminently timely to bring Foucault into the lists’ (p. 23). Scepticism doubts and challenges educational leadership, while critique involves questioning, probing and analysing, in an attempt to demonstrate ‘that things are not as obvious as people believe, making it so that what is taken for granted is no longer taken for granted’ (Foucault, 2002b: 456). Gillies (2013) suggests the adoption of critique as ‘a professional responsibility’ (p. 18), to articulate and employ doubt as to the chosen values, beliefs and assumptions in both policy and practice. Critique thus allows us to raise problems with the presentation and/or conceptualization of a discourse, as it ‘allows one to enter the discourse and by doing so, the problems which one identifies and raises cause the discourse to become problematized’ (Gillies, 2013: 24). Problematization constitutes the ‘development of a given into a question, this transformation of a group of obstacles and difficulties into problems to which the diverse solutions will attempt to produce a response’ (Foucault, 2000a: 118). To sum up, scepticism provides the context, critique provides the weapon, and problematization provides the purpose.

In this paper, we additionally adopt Foucault’s third principle of method (as outlined by Foucault, 1998), whereby ‘practices’ are addressed as a domain of analysis, approaching the study from the angle of what ‘was done’:

Now, since it is a matter of studying the different modes of objectivation of the subject that appear through these practices, one understands how important it is to analyse power relations. But it is essential to clearly define what such an analysis can be and can hope to accomplish. Obviously, it is a matter not of examining ‘power’ with regard to its origin, its principles, or its legitimate limits, but of studying the methods and techniques used in different institutional contexts to act upon the behavior of individuals taken separately or in a group, so as to shape, direct, modify their way of conducting themselves, to impose ends on their inaction or fit it into overall strategies, these being multiple consequently, in their form and their place of exercise; diverse, too, in the procedures and techniques they bring into play. These power relations characterize the manner in which men are ‘governed’ by one another; and their analysis shows how, through certain forms of ‘government’, . . . that the various and particular forms of ‘government’ of individuals were determinant in the different modes of objectivation of the subject. (pp. 462–463)

Herein, Foucault’s concept of Panopticon, which he built upon Bentham’s initial concept, is of importance to revisit in relation to the concepts above. Foucault (1977: 203) poses the main concerns of the panopticon as ‘individualizing observation, with characterization and classification, with the analytical arrangement of space’. The panopticon is defined as a mechanism to control and enforce institutional ideologies through a constant, all-seeing surveillance through various technologies, thereby normalizing perpetual judgement (Foucault, 1977). Therefore, such embodiment of power structure induce conscious and permanent visibility on the individuals, creating a disciplinary society where individuals internalize the gaze of authority, leading to self-regulation and conformity (Foucault, 1977). This situation is even described as ‘a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it’ (Foucault, 1977: 201).

Conscious of the fact that Foucault was keen to avoid being seen as offering a ‘general system, an overarching theoretical framework or worldview’ (Foucault, 2001: 240), we take a ‘piecemeal approach to his work’ (Allen, 2012), by viewing it as a ‘tool-box’ (Megill, 1987). Foucault (2002c) warns, ‘What I’ve written is never prescriptive either for me or for others – at most it’s instrumental and tentative’ (p. 240). Gillies (2013) therefore concludes that Foucault’s (2001) support for his ‘gadgets’ to be utilized as ‘thinking tools’ (p. 65), combined with the powerful status of the current leadership discourse within education, ‘make a Foucauldian analysis eminently suitable and potentially illuminative’ (p. 18), the purpose of which is ‘to question, probe and identify weaknesses, contradictions, assumptions and problems’ (p. 19).

Methodology

In exploring the imposed digitalization of education provision across educational sectors, we utilize a critical autoethnography to question how power and knowledge reflexively generated our actions and interpretations, as well as critically reflect on our own practice as researchers. Autoethnography, as a qualitative method, is defined as ‘artistic and analytical demonstrations of how we come to know, name, and interpret personal and cultural experiences’ (Holman et al., 2013: 1). Critical autoethnography aims to elevate ‘cultural analysis through personal narrative’ by employing ‘multiple standpoints to situate their stories and lives to call out positions of privilege and expose moments of vulnerability’ (Boylorn and Orbe, 2020: 17).

Autoethnography underlies the cruciality of writing as both product and process (Ellis et al., 2011). Exposing our experience and stories about the tough times during the lockdowns necessitated critical decisions about the ways we disclose ourselves (Tomkins, 2020). As opposed to the traditional research format, herein we accommodate our subjectivities in our research and acknowledge emotionality and our influence on research, rather than ‘hiding from these matters or assuming they don’t exist’ (Ellis et al., 2011: 274). In doing so, our values, belief systems and contextual influence are inevitably reflected in our stories and our analysis. Yet, we acknowledge this form of subjectivity as doing Foucauldian analysis through critical autoethnography helped us to uncover and construct our relation to both self and topic. Crucially, such writing involves decisions about the nature, purpose, style and extent of self-disclosure (Ellis, 2004). As researchers, through reflexivity and introspection, we engage in self-study as participants, recognizing our interpretation of facts as shaped by our sociocultural circumstances. We thus utilize our personal stories as a means to understand the impact of institutionalized power and privilege (Marx et al., 2017) during the COVID-19 lockdowns to analyse the imposed digitalization of education provision across educational sectors.

In this paper, we position ourselves as the focal point of inquiry, thus utilizing our personal experiences in public education settings as a means of problematizing the imposed digitalization of education provision. Our personal narratives are the phenomenon under exploration and the methodological approach adopted for analysis, as well as being the mode for data representation – we adopt ‘the triple use of narrative’ (Mifsud, 2016: 865, original emphasis). The perspectives of ‘both narrator and analyst’ (Riessman, 2001) come into view as we adopt the stance of what Smith and Sparkes (2008: 20) label as the ‘storyteller’, where the analysis is the story or the story is the analysis. We further interpret our experiences by adopting Foucault’s trident as a lens and utilizing it as a ‘toolkit’ as outlined in the section above. In the following section, we present our distinct autoethnographies utilizing reflexivity and Foucault’s trident of scepticism, critique and problematization to challenge the imposed switch to online education provision, and the subsequent ways it affected our leadership and governance practices. Our reflexive engagement with this new way of operating through digital technologies is interweaved within our narratives and indicated in italics throughout the autoethnographic accounts below – normal typeface refers to our leadership and management lived experiences, whereas the font in italics indicate the various ways in which we engage with Foucauldian theory to be sceptical about these experiences, while critiquing and problematizing the governing by the imposed digitalization.

Our stories outlining the effects of the imposed digitization on leadership and governance

My auto-ethnographic account: Denise, Head of College Network, Malta

Let me briefly present an overview of the schooling situation during the pandemic period from March 2020 up to July 2022 when all pandemic-related restrictions were removed nationally, in order to give you, reader, an idea of the context in which I had to operate at the leadership helm of 13 primary and secondary state schools. I will then share some of my experiences that demonstrate the effects of the imposed digitization had on leadership and governance practices in the interaction with the various stakeholders involved namely heads of school, teachers, parents/guardians and the students.

The Maltese education system comprises a tripartite system of state, church and independent schools, with education being free of charge for those students who attend the state sector, a section which constitutes 70% of the compulsory school age population. In Malta, all education institutions closed on the 13th of March 2020 and remained closed until the end of the scholastic year (i.e. the first week of July 2020). During this first closure period (March–July 2020), schools gradually shifted to online teaching, with this not necessarily referring to synchronous real-time interaction between teacher and student, but to some form of communication with the provision of feedback. How ‘gradual’ was this shift and what were the determining factors? Was it only ‘teaching’ that occurred? How much learning actually unfolded, especially in the first lockdown period, with the ‘laissez-faire’ provision that state schools were obliged to give?

This communication best suited to the teacher’s needs could take any form from emails, a weekly posting of handouts and tasks to be ‘taught’ by the parents, ready-made videos, recorded lessons, as well as interactive online lessons in real time. What about the students’ needs? How did the education system cater to ensure forms of communication that would be best suited for student reception at all levels? Did the education system suddenly expect parents coming from all walks of life to become ‘makeshift teachers’ overnight by just following written instructions provided by the class teacher? How did this impact the wider pedagogy and curricular entitlement of the students?

A working group within the Ministry for Education and Employment (2020a, 2020b) made up of representatives from the state, church and independent sectors, in addition to teachers’ unions, developed the minimum requirements for online teaching that were communicated to both parents and educators in a number of circulars, while simultaneously exploring the impact of this particular situation on the curriculum. Who decided on the composition of this Working Group? What expertise did these representatives possess (the majority of whom were not class or subject teachers) to determine the ‘minimum requirements for online teaching’?

The Working Group issued a number of recommended guidelines for educators and schools to be followed during the first lockdown school closures, mainly revolving around student communication; dissemination of educational material and student feedback. If these were ‘recommended guidelines’, how strict did they have to be followed and who was monitoring this? What degree of autonomy and agency did educators and schools possess to cater for their school population particular needs? All educators were ‘expected to communicate with their students to provide an educational service’, using their discretion over the preferred online platform to reach students. Is this what teaching and learning was reduced to – ‘an educational service’? One wonders why it was relegated to the discourse of marketization and accountability at par with the ‘services’ being provided in the health sector. . .

Educators were also expected to plan the communication and dissemination of educational material ‘in a manner realistic for themselves and their students’, whilst covering the most important parts of their relevant syllabi. Furthermore, ‘no pressure should be placed on educators to carry out live teaching through video streams or otherwise’. Why did the state want to avoid this ‘pressure’ on teachers to carry out live teaching? Was it to appease the teachers to the detriment of the students? Educators were also encouraged to provide ‘realistic and timely feedback’ to maintain the students’ motivation and scaffold the learning process. However, expecting educators to correct all the tasks carried out by students was deemed as unrealistic, with the general public being invited to maintain grounded assumptions regarding the type and extent of feedback provision. This resulted in distinct and diverse teaching and learning scenarios. This is very contradictory – first encouraging teachers to provide feedback to motivate students and scaffold their learning, and then retracting this from the students under the guise of ‘adequate expectations’. Is the system sacrificing school effectiveness and improvement? But who is the ‘general public’? Are they stakeholders in the education arena? Students’ learning entitlement was further ensured via the provision of an internet connection and a laptop ‘loan’ to those identified by the school without access to this mode of communication. But did a laptop and internet provision address student entitlement? How did schools identify lack of access?

Schools eventually re-opened in a staggered manner according to year groups (which involved students having different starting dates, rather than the whole population at once), at the end of September 2020, with strict protocols revolving around social distancing, hygiene and class bubbles. COVID-contact liaison persons (members of the Senior Leadership Team – the Head or Deputy Head of School – who received additional remuneration) were appointed for each school in October 2021, with numbers varying according to the school population, in order to carry out the contact tracing of COVID-positive staff members and students, as deemed necessary by the health authorities. A second national partial lockdown was announced in mid-March 2021, with school closures from the 15th of March 2021 till the 11th of April 2021, and with synchronous online teaching taking place according to a set (if albeit reduced) timetable. Scholastic year 2021–2022 opened with all the safety protocols in place until these were removed completely after the Easter recess in April 2022. How did the Head of School ensure that the timetable was followed? Was there a control mechanism in place to ensure that all teachers were delivering and all students were attending online and comprehending?

This is the ‘official’ account of what happened across all schools. I will now take you to my experience as Head of College Network in the schools falling under my direct responsibility – a responsibility that weighed very heavily on my shoulders during those obscure times where teaching and learning provision for all students, especially the vulnerable ones, was my top priority. Can we detect a slight shift in leadership priorities here? Reader, you may be wondering what it was pre-pandemic. . . A priority that I could not always fulfil due to factors that were completely beyond my control. Who or what was governing leadership priorities and practices when schools switched online?

I can still remember THE DAY – Thursday 12th March 2020 when my colleagues and I were summoned to an urgent meeting at the ministry. We all knew what was coming as things had been brewing for a while – news about this new virus in China back in December which seemed very distant at the time, gradually followed by an outbreak in Italy, our neighbour, practically, where a lot of students and teachers had recently returned from a holiday, which in turn generated a lot of rumours and confusion among the parents about possible cases of infection – but it was difficult for me to digest the fact that I was actually part of it – the coronavirus had embarked the Maltese shores and was actually threatening to infiltrate my school population. . . This unknown virus took over and started governing the leadership of the college network . . . It was actually subjectivating school leaders insidiously before its official acknowledgement. . .

The then Permanent Secretary, on behalf of the Minister, informed us how grim the situation was and that the Prime Minister with the Cabinet had taken the decision to close schools from Friday 13th March which was the next day. We were given no indication how long the school closures period would last – it was officially announced that this would be till the Easter recess, which was then extended to the summer period, which means that students were absent from school in-situ for 6.5 months. Uncertainty, unpreparedness, and overnight decisions became the ‘order of things’ and were normalized by the different stakeholders in distinct ways and to various degrees as we will be privy to below. . . Does that mean that digital technology subjectified schools and school systems and practices for 6.5 months? Read further to discover and decide for yourself, reader, whether and to what extent this became the mode of subjectivation. . .

The first 2 weeks of school closure in March 2021 was a period of uncertainty for all concerned, this was an unprecedented situation for which we were unprepared – a lived experience of ‘crises management’ (in its plural form). The first week was a shock for me – I am very present in schools, so it was heartbreaking to visit schools (in order to touch base with the minor staff who still had to attend in person) and see the empty classrooms, with student and teacher resources on desks, and black, lifeless AV screens, screens that were always switched on, aiding teachers as a medium of instruction that students enjoyed. AV screens changing from the mode of objectivation to that of subjectivation. . . It was all so silent – I can still picture those ‘ghost’ schools in my mind’s eye – schools that were usually full of life but were now lifeless due to the absence of both the bodied stakeholders and digital technology that made them resemble an apocalyptic landscape – no sounds from humans and technology in both playgrounds and classrooms. Digital technology will soon be embodied elsewhere. . .

MS Teams was not known as a digital platform – teachers had never had to make use of it, so they were digitally unprepared to an online move – besides lacking the skills required to adopt a digital pedagogy, some of them lacked the technical knowhow. Power flowing from the teacher to the digital platform which became the only means for teaching and learning provision. . . Let us be realistic: delivering an in-person classroom lesson is very different from teaching online – it is simply not a matter of transferring to a different medium. There are many factors to be taken into consideration: the students’ age, the lesson resources, screen attention span, manoeuvring the online tools, classwork, homework . . .Digital technologies leading to the self-formation of the subject, that is, students and teachers in this unprecedented scenario. . . For the first school closure period, although MS Teams was the ‘official’ platform encouraged and used by the ministry, this was not imposed on schools, who were free to use whatever platform pleased them – if they did so at all. In my schools, heads of school and teachers dealt with technology in various ways – ranging from one extreme to another. Digital technologies reaching out through various tentacles with the plethora of digital media used presenting leadership dilemmas. . . For example, some of the Heads made a very quick switch to the digital by holding online morning assemblies weekly or even daily for the students in order to keep in touch, while others were more sceptical about it with some even switching off completely. Can we consider this as a matter of governance by digital technology or being governed by digital technology and leaving the panoptical gaze? Teaching also took a different turn. I can clearly remember that some teachers had left their government-issued laptop in the staffroom locker and refused to return to school to collect it due to fear of infection, thus had no device to enable them to connect with their students. Technologies of the self imposed by health discourses leading to lack of access to digital technology? Others experimented with various digital platforms such as Zoom, MS Teams, Google Meet in order to deliver synchronous lessons, that was very positive though not without its challenges. Empowerment by the digital? We can see power coming from different points and flowing from the digital platforms to the teachers and in turn reaching the students. . .

Student handouts sent out to parents via their Facebook Messenger accounts resulted in a particularly awkward situation when parents became over-friendly with the teacher and crossed professional boundaries, a case which required my intervention. The digital establishing itself in subtle and insidious ways. . . Or is it a case of the teachers subjectifying themselves to technology and being subjectified themselves in unknown ways – subjects of and subject to? Some teachers, for example, refused to switch on the camera as they argued that this invaded their privacy – they did not want students (or their parents) to get a glimpse into their private life. This was despite the option of the blurred or other background feature on Teams. Fear of the panoptical gaze from the outside world invading their private sphere? Some teachers bothered less and showed instances of their private life during online lessons that were uncalled for. Embracing the panopticon with open arms? Teachers expressed their fear of being recorded without their consent and reported instances of lessons being interrupted by parents – the latter was then somewhat controlled by the mute microphone function. Governmentality of the digital and by the digital at play here. . . Both including and excluding unwanted participants on the learning digital platform. . . Some students at primary school turned up for their online lessons in pyjamas while in some instances in secondary school, students were inappropriately dressed. So did students equate online teaching with a less formal schooling environment? This makes the reader wonder whether it only applied to relaxed uniform rules or whether it was transported to other areas of assessment, behaviour, expectations, etc. . ..

A major issue beyond my control was internet provision or lack of in students’ homes and the problems caused by inadequate broadband with poor bandwidth. Without internet, they were totally isolated. Not all the student year groups had a tablet, besides some of them having left it at school (though they had been given the opportunity of collecting it) while others had no form of digital device to be able to follow lessons, except for one laptop to be shared among all the household members or in the worst-case scenario, their parents’ mobile phone. Different scenarios involving the ‘digital divide’. . .The digital is actually governing who gets access to online schooling and who remains isolated. . . The Ministry issued laptops and provided free internet subscription to those identified in need. How was the need for the ‘free’ digital identified? Were all the students reached in this manner? Despite this initiative, there were many vulnerable students who fell through the cracks and could not be reached by the school leadership team or professional services digitally. Is this a refusal to be ‘subjects’/‘objects’ of the digital by choice or by necessity? Students who were too young to navigate on their own required their parents’ help that was not always possible either due to lack of technical know-how or else due to job commitments. Was provision of the digital enough? Not so, it seems. . .

Giving students classwork and homework was another issue in itself. Despite using the digital medium to provide students with homework, some teachers sent handouts which they expected the parents to print off in order for the students to fill in and then scan back and send to the teacher. Using the digital medium to send ‘hard copy’ homework to the student through the parents??? We can see the use of digital technology that still required hardware to function. Other teachers found it too time-consuming to correct students’ homework online, therefore sent out sample answers for the students themselves (or the parents, if at primary level) to carry out self-correction. So are the class teachers using the digital medium to turn the parents in the ‘home teachers’ who correct their offspring’s homework? This brings me to the question: During school closures there was teaching provision, with the mode and method varying in degrees, but how much learning actually occurred? Teachers were not prepared for this move – neither in initial teacher education, nor in the professional development that ensued over the year. Pervading subjectivation of the teachers by the digital discourses. . . I must also add that there was a massive training campaign going on by the Directorate for Digital Literacy Skills to enable all stakeholders to familiarize themselves with the MS Teams platform via the provision of webinars for everybody – starting with school heads and teachers and even rolling it out to parents. Domination of the schooling discourse by the ‘digital’ across all stakeholders?

The switch to digital leadership or else platform leadership affected me immensely, especially at the beginning, as it did school heads – moving overnight from having in-person meetings, visiting schools, and heads surrounded (literally) by the SLT members to seeing everyone on screen. It was not the same! This imposed digitalization did have its positive aspects in the long run. Being governed by the digital had its long-term effects – with power flowing to schools who defied the physical odds by taking advantage of the virtual ‘virus-free’ spaces that digital platforms offered. . . Schools still managed to hold concerts and ceremonies for the students online, though it was not the same thing. Despite returning to learning in-situ in the second year, assemblies and meetings were still held online due to the physical restrictions – students and staff connecting to each other on screen, each isolated in their own bubble. I regard this as being ‘near but still far’. With parents, it was a different story. Did the parents allow themselves to be governed by this digital discourse? What forms of resistance did they exercise? It was difficult initially to get them to attend online meetings and eventually to stop them from coming to school in the second year of Covid. Heads found this a very positive move – parental intrusion was now controlled and with online parents’ days, teachers had control over the time spent with individual parents as this was determined by the time slot in Teams.

My auto-ethnographic account: Deniz, university academic and Head of EdAdmin graduate courses, Turkiye

As a university academic with administrative duties back then, my journey through the COVID-19 pandemic has been nothing short of tumultuous. This autoethnography aims to delve into the intricate layers of my experiences, struggles and reflections as I navigated the uncharted waters of academia during the unprecedented time. It was March 12, 2020. I was at a dinner with friends when suddenly the official announcement on TV channels changed everything forever. Everyone was shocked. The first announcement was to suspend primary, secondary and high schools for 1 week, and universities for 3 weeks. However, no one knew this would not end in 2–3 weeks. Then, we moved to various forms of distance teaching. Everyone was paralysed as the ambiguity settled in. Synchronous/asynchroneous, hybrid?flipped? What does hybrid mean? The moment of scepticism set in with a lot of ambiguity and the feeling of fear and worry. Were we about to lose our power as we would not see the students in person?

However, one needs to know the Higher education context and its administration in Turkey to understand the impact of this sudden crises on us. Turkey, which has a centralized higher education system, accommodates 129 public and 78 private universities, with a diverse academic staff of over 176,000). The Council of Higher Education (CoHE) functions as an autonomous entity responsible for the planning, coordination and governance of the HE landscape in alignment with Turkish constitutional principles and Higher Education Laws. Both public and private universities operate under the oversight of CoHE, adhering to its regulations with limited institutional autonomy. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, CoHE enacted emergency measures, including the suspension of in-person classes and the transition to remote education. Universities were directed to establish Coronavirus Boards and implement necessary precautions through campus health protocols. While theoretical courses were moved online, practical courses largely remained in-person. Additionally, universities were instructed to implement measures for travel, international engagements and discrimination prevention. The primary challenge emerged in March 2020, when universities were tasked with swiftly transitioning classes online within a week. Despite CoHE’s initial encouragement of universities to deliver 30% of courses online and the global trend towards prioritizing distance learning, universities and academic staff encountered unexpected difficulties in adapting to the new instructional modes (Karadağ and Yücel, 2020). Coronavirus Commissions were formed in universities to lead and guide the process. Yet, in terms of instructional procedures, they mainly conveyed the CoHE announcements to the faculties. The members were from different ranks and titles from different bodies of the university, yet, their involvement with digitalization of education was a concern. The sudden shift to online platforms required educators to quickly adapt their teaching methodologies, often without adequate training or support. In some universities, this shift was gradual but with us it was on the spot. As the pandemic persisted, so did the mental and emotional toll it took on us. The uncertainty surrounding the duration of remote learning, coupled with concerns about job security and financial stability, weighed heavily on educators’ minds. Many struggled to balance their professional responsibilities with caregiving duties and household chores, leading to feelings of burnout and overwhelm. In this scene, uncertainty, unfamiliarity and instant announcements via overnight decisions became the ‘order of things’. How experienced were the CoHE decision makers and did they think about students’ needs? What were the priorities? How about the gaps in preparedness and support as well as equal access to the digital means by the students?

Before the pandemic, my role was relatively defined: teach classes, conduct research, advise students, attend meetings and take care of administrative processes as the Chair of Educational Administration Division at the Faculty. However, the sudden shift to remote learning in early 2020 upended this routine, thrusting me into a whirlwind of uncertainty and adaptation. Moreover, I had to adopt the administrative duties such as leading the postgraduate programmes of my field at the department. So, for 2 weeks initially, we were left with no students and no classes with the COHE decision. What I experienced as an academic and a middle leader in the academia was staggering in the first 3 months. I worked at a private university and the challenge of accountability and competition was far more serious than for many public universities. We had to inform students immediately about the measures taken and track them individually. Students and some colleagues were overwhelmed with the sudden exposure to ambiguity and turbulence. Some colleagues and students thought it is a break from work initially! Yet, no one was able to see what would happen in the future. I was worried about the students, the pacing, how to lead the process under instant top-down announcements and how to provide equitable teaching to the students with limited resources in their homes or elsewhere. After the first 2 weeks of the initial break, each week more or less; we were directed by CoHE and immediately by the Rectorate to make changes in our teaching and related implementations steadily until almost late 2022. How was the nature of academic work and collaboration being redefined by these changes? And what are the implications for equity in academia? There were a lot of issues to tackle with. Mainly, digitalization of all teaching posed barriers and more control mechanisms on the part of staff and students. In this case, the administrators were also under pressure under CoHE’s frequently changing decisions and implementations. The lockdowns, partial and full came one after another gradually.

Going back to the beginnings of the whole thing, I, myself; was experienced with online teaching as I had been using Moodle and Adobe for over 10 years until 2019 to deliver distant MA courses. Back in 2019 when the pandemic hit, I remember I had been teaching five different undergraduate and three graduate courses across different levels, seeing 300–400 students in a week in various departments of the faculty. They ranged from Freshman to PhD. Overnight, the classes got suspended and no one knew what to do. I immediately got in touch with them through email to organize and to provide support at this time of panic! Meanwhile, in the department, there were different news coming. We went to work on 13 March because only classes were off. We even had a viva and we did it on that day. Inconsistent news all around. Middle leaders did not know what to say and do. We all wanted to stick to our known ‘normal’. Students who stayed in the Halls were officially urged to leave the Halls immediately. Some were even forced out in some parts of the country. I remember students could not find transportation to go back home to their family towns. Did they have the proper study settings at home? In this case, digital was invading us. What was our old normal? What was going to happen to students when back home? The actions were justified through pandemic-related circumstances, but how about students’ and academics’ well-being and practical needs?

Our new timetables arrived in a week. Some public universities only asked to do asynchronous classes, sharing course notes and emailing students. Or shooting lectures and share on platforms like YouTube. In my case, we did everything both synchronously and asynchronously. Because the digital infrastructure was not strong enough to accommodate thousands of students and hundreds of synchronous courses, all of us had to teach anytime between 7 am and 11 pm, 7/24. It was bare luck when your teaching timetable was to be placed. I remember teaching all night on Saturdays. ‘Flexible’ working hours meant working overtime and overload of paperwork to track the whole process and the students! I still see working overtime in times of crisis, in my subjective idealism, as part of an ethical responsibility but the question is: How do the demands for 24/7 availability and the increased workload reflect broader issues of labour relations? What were the power dynamics between faculty, students and administrative bodies?

Questions of the faculty about digital teaching and systems boomed up every single day! The Centre for Distance Education worked day and night to support and IT department was on alert with too many issues from the students and staff. All blurred the boundaries between work and home life. There were rumours about some faculty members who were supposed to be teaching but they weren’t! How could we believe if it were true or false? Shall we check their lesson recordings? Did universities prioritize operations over the well-being of faculty and students? Until digitalization occupied us, had we never been trusted? Discourses were shifting to more authoritarian than before. Despite the good will, did we have to check the log in, log out times of the academic staff?

Challenges were ceaseless. I was teaching NAMES rather than STUDENTS. Speaking to crowds, half of whom were not by the laptop. We were not sure whether the downloaded attendance lists would be legitimate. More importantly, students who had limited or no access to technology and Internet suffered the most. There was no way to connect. I remember calling them by phone to guide what they needed to do. Then came the exam time! The panopticon was definitely sweeping into all houses. Digital technologies, with their extensive reach and diverse digital media platforms, are creating significant challenges for leadership.

Too many debates with a lot of turbulence in our lives! YES, with CoHE and university decision, we urged students to have a second camera showing them during the exams. We observed them live in their privacy over Moodle (for the exam) and Zoom (to see them doing the exam). Voices over the Social Media started to raise about the Violation of Privacy! Both exams and synchronous courses! On the other side of the laptop, I was seen teaching hours to boxes with names on the Zoom. Yes, we moved to Zoom after a while. Then to Ms Teams! All were recorded and shared for offline watching as well! Meanwhile, our university had a TV channel. We urged the students to both watch the courses on the channel in addition to synchronous and asynchronous teaching schedule. Were we the vehicles of gaze over the students while our degree of agency was questionable with the panopticon? Then, what happened to those who did not receive synchronous classes? The concept of ‘flexible working hours’, was it actually beneficial, or does it mask the reality of overwork and lack of boundaries? Can we say this is governance through the digital or being governed through it? Are we serving the panoptical gaze?

After a while, social media was booming with tweets such as ‘Open the Universities! You cannot get into our rooms during classes and exams! that university did this, our university can’t do that!’. All of us had fears and sceptical if we were doing fine! Fear of job loss, sceptical of doing something illegal without knowing while the orders of CoHE was emerging every week or every 2 weeks! More importantly; whether the students were really learning or not was vague! They were teacher candidates and they also had to do school practicum, which was also carried out online. How? Complicated! Me teaching classroom management, for example, through drama, had to switch to pure lecture, which made no sense for a student who had never been to the real classroom environment as a teacher candidate. Here, I would question the level of learning and the extent of the student reception and whether we were able to address their needs. Are asynchronous classes truly effective in providing the same quality of education as synchronous classes?

For me, the priority during the whole lockdown was the emotional and mental well-being of my students as well as being accountable. Imagine a freshman who started the university with a lot of dreams and got locked in for 2 years on and off. When they got back to the campus, they did not even know who was whom! Some said, are you our teacher? I was expecting you looked different. You didn’t look like this on the screen! And me saying: ‘I am afraid I can’t comment about yourself. Because your camera was off all through!’ Then the laughter came. . ..

Behind the scenes, I was immensely tired and stressed out. Almost all of us were invited to film our courses for a couple of hours in the studio without masks from March 2020 onwards. I was with my old-aged mum at home and I did not want her to catch the bug. I can’t forget the day I went to the TV studio for the filming. After 2 months of isolation, it was my turn to do the shooting. The worry and the stress was immense. What would have happened if I had caught the bug? I came home and isolated myself for days. Was the digital shift dominating our all lives, even putting our household health at risk?

As for the work meetings and tracking the staff, there were a lot of strict measures. We were called in from time to time and felt the pressure of job loss even if we were working almost everyday. After the gradual opening of the universities, we started teaching with masks and then the vaccine controls set in! Everyday, we received lists of students with Covid + and those without the vaccine! They were not allowed to go into the campus. If they had somehow managed to enter, the lecturers had to track and send them out! We were mad to play the Police! I remember I had to send a pregnant student out of class because she was not vaccinated! Poor woman and me of course! Herein, we acted as the tools of panopticon where our identities got fragmented and transformed into ‘policing’ and being ‘policed’. The control mechanisms have always been present in institutions, but with the digitalization during the pandemic, it has been the very part of our lives. Was our transformation of identities necessarily an outcome of digitalization, or was it always there?

The imposition of digitalization also transformed the academic life. There were a massive amount of seminars, meetings and conferences online. I remember inviting different colleagues from different parts of the world to my online PhD course of comparative education. They shared their experience and views about different education systems around the globe. Social media was full of academic achievements of the colleagues, sharing various experiences about what they published, how they did teaching. You need to be ‘visible to market yourself’, don’t you?! Here is the new normal of doing it! Were we taking advantage of the digital for marketing ourselves? Has the digital taken over traditional scholar roles? However, I also recognize the systemic inequities that the pandemic laid bare within academia. The digital divide widened, exacerbating disparities in access to education among students. The pressures of productivity and performance intensified, amplifying existing inequalities in tenure and promotion processes.

Conclusions and reflections

The imposition of digitalization during the pandemic has definitely changed our ‘order of things’ in terms of ways of seeing and acting in both personal and professional aspects, thus affecting leadership and governance practices across various system levels in education provision.

Firstly, both autoethnographic accounts, despite the geographical, political and cultural differences, highlighted the degree of governmentality that subjectified all students and us as education leaders. The core issue was a serious health crisis; however, it reproduced a more controlling and new way of power relations; refurbishing our identities as well as those in power. Although the overarching higher-level discourse coming from distinct ministerial or state entities was meant to be supportive and supposedly providing a degree of autonomy, it required conformity; a signifier of governmental rationality (Foucault, 2002a). The COVID-19 pandemic was a phase where trust emerged as one of the most important factors in education institutions (Örücü and Kutlugün, 2022). It led to a binary of trust versus governmentality through the narratives. While organizational trust was emphasized within the institituons and by government officials, the increased form of control over the students and staff was a form of pressure. The crisis narratives illustrate the application of governmentality in managing the population of the various education institutions. The suspension of classes and evacuation directives are techniques of governance aimed at controlling behaviour and maintaining order. The overnight decisions and reliance on middle leaders for communication suggest a surveillance and regulation mechanism that monitors and directs actions. The effort to maintain a sense of ‘normal’ reflects normalization processes that reinforce existing power structures and control mechanisms. Moreover, from a Foucauldian stance, leadership and academic identities were transformed into the dual roles of ‘policing’ and ‘being policed’, which highlight a dynamic where individuals are both enforcers and subjects of control. This has effect on power relations within the institution and in some instances, it was likely to create an environment of mutual distrust and stress. Power dynamics in the form of governmentality illustrate how individuals are ‘governed’ by one another, revealing that specific methods of ‘governing’ have shaped the diverse ways in which individuals have been made into subjects (Foucault, 1998).

Secondly, Foucault’s concept of panopticon (tracking attendance lists and insisting on ‘switched-on’ cameras) all made us apparata for the panopticon. Ironically, our degree of agency was questionable under these circumstances. The imposed digital tools sounded practical as a tool to ease our lives to reach students; yet their power in fragmenting and changing our identities towards mechanical robots who had no idea what was happening on the other side of the screen was encompassing. The ‘overarching gaze’ elements present in both autoethnographic accounts lend themselves to the idea of the panopticon where individuals internalize the gaze of authority, leading to self-regulation and conformity (Foucault, 1977). For instance, asking students to have a second camera on during the synchronous exams in Turkiye or teachers resistance to switch on their cameras in Malta could be the signifiers of the fear of the panopticon. On the other hand, it led to further normalization and conformity globally in the post-Covid era, whereby this new form of the panopticon could be described as a watchtower through digital tools and invasion of privacy for all of us in terms of boundaries of work, teaching and learning. Herein, panopticon’s primary functions as centering on ‘individualizing observation, characterizing and classifying individuals, and the structured organization of space’ is at work as it acts as a tool for enforcing institutional ideologies by employing continuous, pervasive surveillance through various technologies, thus establishing a state of constant judgement (Foucault, 1977).

On the other hand, the assumption that synchronous teaching methods, and the notion of flexible working hours are beneficial raise considerable concern. For the students with limited or even no access to technological infrastructure, the inequalities were reproduced and intensified. The digital divide became a marker of structural inequality as many students lacked adequate devices and internet access, effectively excluding them from the ‘digital panopticon’ of the classroom. Digital governance, while extending educational reach, inadvertently imposed barriers that marginalized vulnerable students, leading to what Foucault might describe as a systematic exclusion through governmentality. The issuance of laptops and internet subscriptions attempted to address this, yet these efforts were uneven and insufficient, demonstrating how digital governance often reinforces rather than mitigates inequality.

One can also observe the pervading subjectivation of staff and students in distinct ways (Foucault, 2002a). The blurred line between work and private life became even invisible in a way that led to subjectivation of both the education practitioners at various levels and the students. This unfolded through normalization of the critique and judgement, towards stronger forms of conformity (Foucault, 1991).

In terms of Foucault’s trident of scepticism, critique and problematization (Foucault, 2002; Gillies, 2103), we, as authors, found ourselves in an endeavour to deconstruct our narratives from Malta and Türkiye. Applying Foucault’s trident to analyse Malta and Türkiye’s educational response to COVID-19 reveals many layers of questioning regarding authority, surveillance, governance and the role of digital technology in education. Foucault’s notion of scepticism, which challenges presumed norms and assumed authority, encourages us to probe the Maltese educational system’s policies and actions during the lockdown periods. Key questions arise about the decisions made by educational authorities, the composition and influence of decision-making bodies, and the mechanisms implemented to monitor and enforce policies, particularly given that these policies were implemented under the guise of flexibility. This raises significant questions about authority, autonomy, and the inherent power structures educational systems’ response to the pandemic. Through scepticism, it becomes apparent that the crisis exposed, and perhaps intensified, existing tensions around control, technology and inequality, forcing us to ask whether these changes were temporary adaptations or if they signal a lasting shift in educational governance. Despite the challenges, moments of resistance and self-determination emerged, with educators and students occasionally subverting or adapting to digital demands in ways that preserved some autonomy.

In this paper, we attempted to explore how this imposed digitalization affected leadership and governance across different education systems and levels in two different geographical and cultural contexts, Malta and Türkiye. We utilized critical autoethnography to question how power and knowledge reflexively generated our actions and interpretations, as well as critically reflected on our own practice as researchers. Our autoethnographic exploration of imposed digitalization across distinct education sectors in diverse cultural contexts has implications for theory, policy and practice. In theory, Foucauldian concepts are useful not only in examining educational discourses but also in exploring the educational leadership within diverse contexts under crisis. At policy level, our exploration provided how various forms of governance and subjectivication of the individuals are reconstructed through a global shift. In practice, it demonstrated how Foucault’s critique (Gillies, 2013) underscores the tension between control and freedom, as well as the resilience of individuals navigating the constraints and possibilities of a rapidly digitizing educational landscape.