Research in times of COVID-19

Cristina Aliagas, Júlia Llompart, Mariona Pascual, Naymé Salas and Claudia Vallejo are Early Career Researchers in the Department of Language and Literature Education and Social Science Education at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. In this interview they were asked to reflect on their experiences as researchers in times of the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the second semester of the 2019-2020 academic year, a key phase of the project was planned, called the Implementation Phase, which included the field trials in our Faculty of Education. Therefore, from January to June 2020 several actions were supposed to be taken in collaboration with other teacher educators, student teachers and in-service teachers in a school situated near our university. These actions included: sending out a survey, implementing the LISTiac Reflection Tool -student reflections, staff reflections, observation protocols and interviews-, documenting all the process in a Logbook and creating a local data corpus.

INTERVIEWER:
How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected your research plan?
LLOMPART: When the pandemic and the lockdown started in Spain, part of the planned field work had already been done. Thus, I had had meetings with other teacher educators about Linguistically Sensitive Teaching and about planning some sessions in their classrooms, I had sent out the survey to student teachers and in-service teachers, I had done a training session (together with another member of the project) in the collaborating school with in-service teachers and I had carried out some student reflection sessions in different subjects, including with Claudia Vallejo. In general terms, I would say that half of the fieldwork had been done by mid-March. Nevertheless, the field work included more actions and so a re-planning of those had to be considered. In dialogue and collaboration with both the LISTiac research team (four members from other institutions and myself) and the other teacher educators who had participated in the project so far, the activities still needed were planned in order to transform them into 'virtual' ones.
The main changes that had to be done were: transforming the reflection sessions in the teacher education program into virtual ones, which implied modifying the materials that were to be used as well as the time used for those activities; doing the interviews with teacher educators and student teachers online; and, unfortunately, cancelling the planned activities in the school with in-service teachers. These modifications had several effects on the fieldwork and thus on the collected data. Firstly, the discussions carried out through virtual platforms with the student teachers were not as rich as those previously done face to face. In the previous session there had been more participation and, in the virtual ones, just a few students participated in the discussions. Secondly, some of the student teachers' initial reflections had to be done directly in a virtual platform; we had to ask them to meet online in groups of 5 or 6, carry out the discussion and record themselves. This procedure was much more complicated. Thirdly, we could not collect some of the data that we had planned to get, such as observations done by the student teachers in the schools or school placements in the participating school. On the other hand, the new situation did not have much effect on the interviews, since they were a oneon-one activity which could be perfectly done online, and on the Logbook writing (although it profoundly affected its content).
As we can observe, the arrival of the COVID pandemic, in a way, affected the research plan and the outcomes of the field work, but we were also able adapt to the new situation and continue the data collection and, thus, the project.

INTERVIEWER: What advice do you have for others?
LLOMPART: Since the future regarding the COVID situation is uncertain, my main advice for present and future research is to plan for different possible scenarios and to be very flexible. On the one hand, I suggest being flexible with ways of collecting data and materials. We had to try to change everything in the middle of the project but it is much better if the possibility of working virtually is planned in advance -at least for the near future. It is true that virtually some activities come out differently, but planning them with the virtual possibility might imply being able to continue the project. On the other hand, flexibility is also needed regarding the participants in the project. Many people feel overwhelmed with the new situation and they might be overloaded with work. So, it is crucial to be patient and adapt to their timing and possibilities. Finally, it is also important to plan regarding the ethical considerations; I suggest that there is also a need for planning how to get informed consent from the participants and to clearly specify the procedure that will be followed, either in face-to-face situations or in virtual ones, in order to make sure to get permission that is accepted by an Ethical Committee.
All in all, research must go on and it might be in ways that we did not imagine before March 2020 and we need to be as ready as possible.
ENTREVISTADORA: Com ha afectat la pandèmia de la COVID-19 el teu pla de recerca? PASCUAL: La pandèmia no m'ha afectat a nivell d'investigació, ja que afortunadament a casa no ens hem vist afectats severament per la crisi sanitària ni econòmica. El confinament, en el meu cas, m'ha permès trobar un millor equilibri entre la feina i la vida personal. He pogut assolir els meus objectius tant a llarg com a curt termini, ja que ja havia recollit totes les dades i em va trobar en un moment on el que necessitava era tranquil·litat i perseverança per fer les anàlisis estadístiques finals, redactar els resultats, elaborar la discussió i acabar de maquetar i perfilar la tesi doctoral. Poder dur a terme tot el meu pla de recerca en el meu espai familiar i poder conciliar la vida personal amb la professional ha estat un privilegi. Tinc la sort de tenir un entorn comprensiu amb els meus temps de feina i la meva dedicació a la investigació, i això m'ha permès poder treballar des de casa amb plenitud i equilibri.

INTERVIEWER:
What research were you doing at the time the COVID-19 pandemic began?
VALLEJO: I was not doing much hands-on research actually (for example, fieldwork), but was focused on writing. The only research activity I was planning to carry was with the AFEX program at Casa Asia, doing some seminars for the facilitators and visiting the sites to do ethnographic observation and registers. Apart from that, I did help to gather data for the LISTiac project during my classes, together with Júlia Llompart.

INTERVIEWER:
How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected your research plan?
VALLEJO: As I have said, it hasn't been affected much as nothing was going on yet on a regular basis, but it did postpone our plans to start doing ethnographic research on-site.
Regarding LISTiac, we had to adapt the activities to the online sessions. We did it collaboratively with Júlia Llompart, exchanging ideas on how to best deal with the new format. We still used the same resources and tried to keep it all as similar as possible to the original face-to-face planning.
In terms of writing, it did affect the chances of meeting with colleagues and sharing our analysis for feedback, which is always helpful (although this can easily be transferred to online encounters).
I might say, though, that trying to balance teaching, researching, writing, and my children's need for online-school support and overall care has been extremely difficult and clearly affected both my professional productivity and the quality of our family time. This, plus the fact that teaching online requires much more time and work, implied working an amazing number of out-of-schedule hours at nights and weekends.

INTERVIEWER:
What advice do you have for others? VALLEJO: Not much, actually, as I am still struggling to solve these issues in a healthier way for all parts involved. I would love to read the advice from other researchers and how they have coped with these new scenarios.