Distance Teaching of Psychology in Europe: Challenges, Lessons Learned, and Practice Examples During the First Wave of COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic has affected many areas of our lives including education. In the time of designing this study most schools, colleges, and universities across Europe were closed and psychology educators were expected to change their teaching methods rather quickly. This study investigates how they coped with this situation, which technology and methods they used to teach psychology distantly, and which barriers and outcomes they found in this situation. Participants were N = 660 secondary school and university teachers from 28 European countries. The results showed that the participants across Europe face similar challenges in adopting distance teaching methods, which were technical and organizational rather than pedagogical. Despite the fact they found distance teaching of specific psychological contents challenging, psychology teachers also described positive aspects of distance teaching, examples of good practice and lessons learned that could be generally implemented in the teaching of psychology beyond the pandemic situation.