Concluding Thoughts: What Can(’t) we Research About Emergency e-Learning?

The interventions in this spotlight draw attention to various ways that political science and international relations experienced the emergency e-learning transition in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. By way of conclusion, I turn to the questions still to be asked about pandemic pedagogy and what lessons it might hold for teaching and learning. Although thought-provoking and productive for our present reality, the norm/exception logic embedded in analysis of pandemic pedagogy risks overemphasizing the emergency. In its least harmful form, attention to the emergency nostalgizes the norm ; at worst, overemphasis of deficiencies in the emergency crowd out space in which those in the normal condition might be expressed. The tightrope to be walked in researching pandemic pedagogy is that careful examination is necessary but may blind our analysis to important elements.