Practicing Self Learning of ICT for Resilience Amidst the COVID-19 Outbreak: Experiences from Kathmandu Valley

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to unravel how the school leaders, teachers, students and parents from Kathmandu Valley have experienced the self- learning of ICT use during the COVID- 19.  It basically aimed at exploring how the sudden outbreak of COVID- 19 pandemic led the research participants to different vulnerabilities, and how the adoption of ICT use worked as resilience mechanism for them. Guided by the philosophical assumptions of interpretivism, the study considered the school leaders, teachers, students and parents to have subjective experiences regarding COVID- 19 and ICT use.  And for making sense about how they have experienced ICT use amid the pandemic subjectively, narrative inquiry was adopted as research method.  Using purposive sampling, a school leader, a teacher, a student and a parent having different socio-economic backgrounds were selected from Kathmandu Valley.  Their experiences were assembled through in-depth interview, for which the researchers engaged with them for a prolonged period via phone calls and real time meetings.  The assembled experiences were further analyzed with theoretical support, following the process of transcribing, coding, categorization and thematization. Through the collective narratives, it was explored that the COVID- 19 outbreak had come to the research participants, while the adversities they experienced were about the insecurities and stress resulted due to school closures, along with their less familiarity with ICT use.  Nonetheless, the adversities were found to have minimized due to their motivation for self- learning of ICT use, and adopting the same, they were found to have grown resilient.