Teachers’ perceptions of the pandemic’s impact and reflections on post-pandemic higher education

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the impact of university professors' experiences during the covid-19 pandemic on their teaching work and perceptions of teaching and learning processes, as well as to reflect on the influences of these experiences in the post-pandemic period. To this end, an online questionnaire was administered to 15 professors from a Chemistry Education degree course at the Universidade Federal Tecnológica do Paraná – Apucarana Campus. The responses were interpreted based on discursive textual analysis. The analysis resulted in three main categories: challenges and adaptations in teaching and learning during the pandemic; psychological and social impacts on teaching; and educational reconfigurations in the post-pandemic era. The results highlight that the rapid transition to remote teaching brought pedagogical difficulties, such as a lack of student engagement and low learning quality, in addition to impacting the mental health of faculty, generating anxiety and frustration. However, the period also encouraged the adoption of new technologies and hybrid methodologies. In-person teaching is still widely valued by the professors, due to the loss of human contact and the weakening of the sense of belonging to the university during remote teaching.