Virtual teaching and power dynamics: Implications for decolonial practices in LIC-HIC educational partnerships

Area of Science:

• Global Health Education
• Academic Partnerships
• Health Systems Strengthening

Background:

• Global academic collaborations between low-income (LIC) and high-income countries (HIC) risk perpetuating power differentials.
• The Toronto Addis Ababa Academic Collaboration (TAAAC) utilized in-person teaching visits to foster equitable partnerships between the University of Toronto (UofT) and Addis Ababa University (AAU).
• The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a shift to virtual teaching, challenging the TAAAC's foundational reliance on in-person interaction and contextual accountability.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine adaptations in the TAAAC model during the transition to virtual teaching.
• To understand stakeholder experiences within the TAAAC collaboration under pandemic-induced virtual modalities.
• To assess the impact of virtual teaching on power dynamics and relational accountability in a LIC-HIC academic partnership.

Main Methods:

• Qualitative case study approach.
• Descriptive and intrinsic case study design.
• Examination of adaptations and stakeholder experiences in response to virtual teaching.

Main Results:

• The pandemic-disrupted TAAAC's emphasis on local context and relational components.
• Virtual teaching replaced in-person visits, failing to mitigate power differentials between UofT and AAU faculty.
• Established structures were insufficient to maintain accountability in the absence of physical presence.

Conclusions:

• Virtual platforms undermined the relational and context-specific strengths of the TAAAC model.
• Virtual teaching reinforced one-sided knowledge exchange, decontextualized education, and perpetuated epistemic injustice.
• The shift to virtual teaching eroded accountability within the longstanding LIC-HIC partnership, highlighting its limitations for context- and relationship-centric collaborations.