Stanton Wortham

This article introduces the special issue, “Indexing Persons.” In this introduction, we distinguish persona- and person-indexing registers . While the former refers to speech registers that enact social types of personhood, the latter denotes registers whose indexical value enacts and points to individuated entities (social “tokens”), such as biographical persons. In so doing, we engage with the anthropological literature on the person as a cultural category, taking two complementary perspectives: a “sign’s eye view” and a “subject’s ‘I’ view.” The first view follows sign activity to ask how semiosis indexically signifies persons, while the second centers the person and asks how their subjectivity is “made up” through semiosis. Through this discussion, we introduce the articles of the issue while reflecting on the complex dialectic between these different dimensions of enregisterment and their relationship to individuation and identity, subjectivity and personhood.

Purpose: Educational technology (“EdTech”) served a pivotal role in keeping schools functioning during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Little is known about EdTech leaders’ roles in shaping this response. This study explores EdTech leaders’ perspectives and backgrounds, their response to the pandemic, how they envision their roles as educators, and their perspectives about how technology facilitates educational innovation.Design/Approach/Methods: This study uses a qualitative, phenomenological approach to understand how 11 EdTech leaders experienced the pandemic. Participants were recruited for interviews in summer 2021 via purposive sampling to include diverse backgrounds and perspectives. Data were analyzed inductively.Findings: The findings show that a four-category typology can be used to describe EdTech leaders’ diverse backgrounds and experiences. Leaders emphasized equity and open collaboration in their pandemic responses, by expanding access to their tools and adapting their products as users’ needs evolved. EdTech leaders anticipate streamlined user experiences, improvements in online learning, and increased adoption of artificial intelligence and simulated learning environments.Originality/Value: This study addresses a gap in the research concerning EdTech leaders’ perspectives on their efforts to support educators and their experiences during the pandemic. We hope this study sparks additional research on EdTech leaders’ experiences and roles in education.

The COVID-19 pandemic reinforced the importance of supporting students’ comprehensive well-being when teaching online. One promising approach is formative or whole-person education, which emphasizes wholeness, purpose, and community. We created a scale using a polytomous Item Response Theory modeling approach, measuring the extent to which postsecondary teachers engage in formative education online. To our knowledge, this is the first scale designed to measure this construct. The scale was developed within an exploratory sequential mixed methods study on formative education online that also included semi-structured interviews with 37 faculty members. Results from the qualitative analysis were used to develop initial items. This data-informed process increased the construct validity of the scale. We refined the original item pool through a pilot test using a sample of 308 instructors. This article presents psychometric results for the final, 10-item scale using a sample of 245 instructors. Evaluation of item fit statistics, item trace lines, and the total information curve indicate that the graded response model was appropriate for this scale. The Cronbach’s alpha and marginal reliability coefficients for the final scale were .90 and .91, indicating good reliability. Future research can explore how this scale might be adapted for in-person learning environments and other contexts.

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Faculty members abruptly transitioned to online course delivery during the COVID-19 public health crisis. Unfortunately, the isolation of learning online had the potential to damage students’ well-being during an already stressful pandemic. Furthermore, many faculty members had little experience with online modes of instruction and few effective strategies for building community online. This exploratory sequential mixed methods study uses data from 37 individual interviews with faculty across diverse disciplines, course evaluations from 13 of the 37 interview participants, and survey data from 347 faculty to answer the following research question: How did faculty foster a sense of community online to support students’ holistic well-being during the COVID pandemic? What strategies can faculty use to create community and foster well-being in online courses? Results show that successful strategies centered around intentional and purposeful course design, establishing clear expectations for faculty and students, and fostering supportive and trustworthy online learning environments.