Behind the Virtual Facade: Using Photovoice to Relieve the Academic Stress of Pre-service Teachers in Indonesia

Abstract

The technique of photovoice can be defined as a process whereby people can identify, represent, and enhance their social rules and social practices using photographs accompanied by verbal commentary. Over recent decades, photovoice has been widely used to capture pre-service teachers’ learning experiences in a teacher education context, including their beliefs, emotions, values and perceptions. The current study uses photovoice to identify and analyse the academic stresses experienced by pre-service teachers in an academic reading classroom. This phenomenological case study aims to unravel the stresses experienced by undergraduate students while they were engaged in mandatory online learning under pandemic conditions through the use of photovoice. Out of thirty-one students who took part in online learning in an academic reading course, two female students were recruited to participate and discuss the photographs they had chosen in relation to their lived experience of mandatory online learning. The data were derived from their photovoice record supplemented by a follow-up semi-structured interview.   A visual illustration and verbal commentary they produced constitutes evidence of the students’ academic stress and provides insight into this phenomenon. This study reported that numerous possible reasons for academic stress identified by participants, from the task burden and lack of connection, feelings of loneliness and exhaustion related to online learning. These results suggest that teacher education programmes need to minimize the burden of tasks, give students the chance to speak about what they feel about online learning, and finally design interactive materials for online learning.