Challenges of Online Teaching for Primary Level Educators - Navigating through the Challenges in the South Asian Countries

The world is passing through unprecedented times ushered in by climatic changes, pandemic waves, natural calamities, etc. These forces threaten disruptions in almost every sphere of life. The recent past has witnessed forced closure of academic institutions in quick succession during these uncertain times across south-asian nations as also in other parts of the world. Of all the learners in educational ecosystem of primary, secondary and tertiary-level, the various reports suggest that the primary school education sector has been hit hardest. This sector could not deal with these turbulent times in the same manner as platform of teaching-learning shifted from face-to-face to online. While much of recent researches have been conducted for higher academic institutions, the primary-level studies are by far a very few. This calls for an urgent need to conduct a comprehensive study to understand and mitigate the challenges faced by primary school teachers among the south-asian nations. To bridge this gap, a thematic analysis of the qualitative data from primary and secondary sources has been done using Cooper’s framework to uncover the challenges faced by primary school teachers and facilitators. The research proposes a conceptual model that attempts to link the major entities to address the challenges in the online education ecosystem at the primary school level. This study differentiates as being among a very few researches in India and south-asian nations to highlighting the challenges faced by young learners to imbibe foundational skills. The study contributes to development of an integrated model of Teaching-Learning framework that weaves in challenges faced by primary teachers with the robust support system of other stakeholders.