No Teacher Left Offline: A Hermeneutic Study of Online Communication and Relationship Building for Near-Retirement Educators at Universities in Manila, Philippines

Abstract

The pandemic forced a shift in the mode of delivery in education. Forcing everyone to migrate to the online platform just to make learning and communication possible. The platform is one thing, but paying attention to the sender of the message in the educational context is also a must to ensure effectiveness despite the trials. With near-retirement educators or those who belong to the baby boomer generation regarded as the tenured and respected individuals in the field, we must ensure support and assistance to help them navigate their way through an unmastered territory. This study seeks to understand the experiences of near-retirement educators and how they adapt to the obligatory online communication setup for relationship-building with their students.

Through purposeful sampling, four near-retirement educators were invited to a one-on-one interview where they shared narratives during the shift to fully online communication. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and following the Hermeneutic approach, analyzed and interpreted.