Beyond the Closure: Autoethnographic Insights into the Lasting Impacts of COVID-19 on Education in Egypt and the UK

Beyond the Closure: Autoethnographic Insights into the Lasting Impacts of COVID-19 on Education in Egypt and the UK | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Article Beyond the Closure: Autoethnographic Insights into the Lasting Impacts of COVID-19 on Education in Egypt and the UK Mahmoud Harb This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-7510051/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract This study examines the long-term implications of COVID-19 school closures in two contrasting contexts: an Egyptian village school and a Muslim school in Manchester, UK. Using autoethnography, it weaves together teacher interviews, follow-up conversations, and the researcher’s own memories as both student and teacher. Six themes emerged: unfinished schooling and reliance on tutoring; cultural as well as technical digital divides; religion shaping the use of e-tools; the emotional labour of teachers; post-COVID continuities; and shifting cultural meanings of education. Findings show that COVID-19 acted not as a rupture but as an accelerant, magnifying inequalities and redrawing boundaries between school, family, and technology. In Egypt, closures entrenched shadow education; in Manchester, digital engagement blurred home–school boundaries and exposed hidden inequalities. The study highlights the need for policies that move beyond access and infrastructure to address the cultural, moral, and emotional dimensions of post-COVID education. Humanities/Cultural and media studies Social science/Cultural and media studies Social science/Education Humanities/Literature Humanities/Religion COVID-19 and Education School Closures Shadow Education Digital Divide Religion and Education Teacher Resilience Emotional Labour Autoethnography Egypt UK Muslim Schools Post-COVID Transformations Cultural Meanings of Schooling 1. Introduction I still remember the silence when schools closed their doors during COVID-19. Classrooms that once echoed with the noise of learning and laughter became empty, replaced by the glow of screens that many children could not access. For me, this silence was not unfamiliar. Growing up in Egypt, I had long witnessed how education could be absent, disrupted, or shifted into private tutoring outside the school. The closures of 2020–2021 did not simply pause learning—they reopened old questions about inequality, culture, and the meaning of education itself. The pandemic caused the largest disruption of education in modern history, affecting over 1.6 billion learners worldwide (UNESCO, 2021). Schools were forced into emergency remote teaching, exposing stark inequalities in access to technology, differences in cultural acceptance of digital tools, and the emotional labour placed on teachers (Donnelly & Patrinos, 2021; MacIntyre et al., 2020). While these closures were temporary, their legacies continue to shape education in profound ways. This article examines these long-term implications in two contrasting contexts: Egypt, where systemic inequalities and cultural factors limited the adoption of digital learning, and the United Kingdom, where schools had the infrastructure to transition online but faced challenges of engagement, equity, and sustainability. By focusing particularly on the role of religion and the use of e-tools, the study highlights how technology in education is never neutral but always mediated by cultural values, institutional structures, and personal histories (Selwyn, 2016). My position in this study is both insider and outsider. As an Egyptian student who relied on tutoring to survive an underfunded school system, I knew what it meant to experience “unfinished learning.” As a teacher and doctoral researcher in the UK, I observed a different world—where laptops were provided, but participation was uneven, and teachers carried the weight of monitoring and motivating students online. This dual perspective shaped my choice of autoethnography as methodology, enabling me to weave my story with those of the teachers I interviewed. The research draws on interviews with teachers in Egypt and the UK, follow-up conversations conducted between 2022 and 2025, my field notes, and my personal memories. Together, these narratives reveal six themes: continuities and disruptions in schooling, digital divides, religion and resistance to e-tools, teacher identity and emotional labour, post-COVID transformations, and cultural shifts in the meaning of education. The aim is not only to document how schools navigated closures but to explore what these experiences reveal about the long shadow of the pandemic on teaching, learning, and culture. The article argues that COVID-19 was not just a temporary disruption but a cultural turning point that continues to redefine education in both Egypt and the UK. The article is structured as follows. The next section reviews relevant literature on school closures, digital divides, and cultural perspectives on technology. The methodology section outlines the autoethnographic approach and data sources. The main body presents the data analysis and findings across six themes, blending teachers’ narratives with my own reflections. The conclusion summarises the contributions of the study and identifies directions for policy and future research. 2. Literature Review When schools closed in March 2020, it was described as the greatest educational disruption in living memory. UNESCO (2021) reported that more than 1.6 billion learners were affected globally. Governments rushed to provide emergency responses, but what became clear was that the crisis exposed fractures that were already present: unequal access to technology, cultural barriers to adoption, and the emotional toll on teachers (Donnelly & Patrinos, 2021; OECD, 2020). 2.1. School Closures and Their Global Shadow When schools closed, the silence was counted in days of lost instruction and percentages of students disconnected. Yet the literature reminds us that the silence had already been there, built into fragile foundations long before the pandemic. COVID-19 did not create these fractures—it magnified them. In Egypt, research has long documented the heavy reliance on private tutoring, where formal schooling often provides only partial coverage of the curriculum (Sobhy, 2012). During COVID-19, this parallel system became the default. Families leaned more heavily on tutors to fill the gaps left by unfinished school terms, deepening a dependence that was already entrenched. Post-pandemic accounts suggest that tutoring not only persisted but expanded after schools reopened, becoming further normalised as the “real” schooling for many students (Assaad & Krafft, 2022). In the UK, closures revealed a different kind of vulnerability. Survey and administrative data show that although online platforms were widely available, student engagement was highly uneven (Andrew et al., 2020). Engzell, Frey, and Verhagen (2021) found that learning loss was steepest among disadvantaged pupils and in early year groups, where parental involvement was crucial. Follow-up evidence into 2022–2023 confirms that these gaps did not disappear with reopening but persisted across cohorts, affecting secondary transitions and widening attainment inequalities (EEF, 2023). Taken together, the literature shows that closures did not create inequality—they made it visible. In Egypt, inequality spoke through the rise of tutoring as a shadow system; in the UK, it spoke through the silence of disengaged pupils behind their screens. These shadows have not faded with reopening but continue to shape education in both contexts. 2. 2. Digital Divides: More Than Access At the start of the pandemic, the digital divide was framed in simple terms: who had a device, and who did not. Yet as the literature shows, the reality was far more complex. Access was only the first barrier; what families and students could do with that access depended on culture, confidence, and support. In Egypt, the divide was often stark. Rural families had little or no connectivity, while in urban areas, devices were scarce and frequently shared among siblings (El-Said & Youssef, 2021). For many households, schooling stopped entirely. In contrast, urban elites turned to Zoom or WhatsApp, creating a parallel digital privilege (Trucano, 2020). In the UK, the government moved quickly to distribute laptops and Wi-Fi dongles to families in need (Andrew et al., 2020). Yet even here, teachers discovered that access did not guarantee participation: some students logged on without engaging, while others lacked the parental support or home space to use devices effectively (Hutchinson, 2021). Scholars such as Selwyn (2016) and Warschauer (2004) remind us that technology is never neutral—it is embedded in social and cultural contexts. Post-pandemic studies confirm that inequalities in online learning are sustained less by infrastructure than by differences in home environments, parental mediation, and student confidence (OECD, 2022). Digital divides therefore persisted beyond the closures, shaping how families continued to view the value of e-learning after 2022. The literature suggests that digital inequality is both technical and cultural. In Egypt, exclusion often lived outside the screen: for many students, there was no device to turn on, no connection to join. In the UK, it lived inside the screen: students had access but lacked the resources, routines, or motivation to engage. The pandemic made these divides visible, and the years since reopening show that they remain deeply rooted in the educational landscapes of both countries. 2.3. Religion, Culture, and E-Tools For some families, the camera was not just a window for learning—it was a window into morality. The literature shows that in certain contexts, e-tools were not only technical innovations but cultural battlegrounds, shaped by anxieties around religion, propriety, and gender norms. In Egypt, research documents how education is entangled with moral discourses and family authority (Herrera, 2006). During COVID-19, these dynamics intensified. Parents—particularly in more conservative or rural areas—restricted their daughters’ participation in online lessons, fearing exposure to inappropriate content or unsupervised socialising (El-Deghaidy & Mansour, 2021). Post-pandemic studies suggest that while acceptance of e-learning has grown, resistance has not disappeared: as late as 2023, roughly one in five families continued to express reluctance to use digital platforms on cultural or religious grounds (Khalifa, 2023). By contrast, UK-based studies—including those in Islamic schools—report a far more pragmatic approach. Teachers integrated platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom without cultural controversy (Kim & Asbury, 2020). Here, barriers were logistical (aging laptops, shrinking budgets) or pedagogical (students muting cameras, limited motivation), but religion itself did not obstruct adoption. E-learning was framed as practical rather than moral, a necessary adaptation rather than a cultural risk. The literature therefore highlights a striking contrast: the same platform could be moralised in one context and normalised in another. In Egypt, online learning was sometimes viewed through the lens of faith and morality; in the UK, even in faith-based schools, it was viewed through the lens of functionality. Post-COVID, this divergence persists. E-tools remain a site of negotiation in Egypt, while in the UK they have largely been absorbed into the normal landscape of teaching. 2. 4. Teachers, Resilience, and Emotional Labour For many teachers, the pandemic turned resilience into a second timetable—one they never asked for. Overnight, they were expected to master new digital platforms, maintain daily contact with families, and safeguard students’ wellbeing, all while managing their own uncertainties and fears. The literature consistently shows how this rapid expansion of roles created both strain and innovation (MacIntyre, Gregersen & Mercer, 2020; Kim & Asbury, 2020). In Egypt, systemic neglect and limited infrastructure meant that many teachers were left unable to maintain meaningful contact with students. Studies report widespread frustration and resignation: some teachers admitted that they “had no communication” with students at all during closures (El-Said & Youssef, 2021). The absence of institutional support left individual educators feeling powerless. In the UK, the story was not absence but overload. Teachers quickly adopted platforms such as Microsoft Teams, ClassDojo, and Zoom, but at the cost of exhaustion. Kim and Asbury (2020) capture this sentiment with the words of one teacher: “It was like the rug had been pulled from under you.” Accounts of phoning parents nightly or monitoring engagement late into the evening reflect how the emotional labour of teaching intensified, even as technical solutions expanded. Theoretically, this resonates with Kelchtermans’ (2009) argument that teacher identity is inherently vulnerable and continuously renegotiated in response to shifting demands. Day and Gu (2010) caution against romanticising “resilience”: while teachers demonstrated remarkable adaptability, this often masked deeper systemic failures. Post-pandemic evidence reinforces this concern. Allen, Jerrim, and Sims (2022) note that many UK teachers reported lingering fatigue and burnout in 2022–2023, while Egyptian teachers described long-term disillusionment with online initiatives that were abandoned once schools reopened. Taken together, the literature shows that resilience is not a limitless personal trait but a relational and structural outcome. Teachers in both contexts carried the emotional weight of the closures, and many continue to carry it long after classrooms reopened. Their resilience kept education afloat, but it also left scars—reminders that resilience comes at a cost when systems fail to share the burden. 2.5. Autoethnography and the Lived Story of Education As the pandemic unfolded, much of the research on education was dominated by numbers: days of learning lost, percentages of students offline, predicted economic costs. These accounts were vital, but they often left out the texture of lived experience—the frustration of a teacher phoning parents late into the night, the unease of a family debating whether their daughter could appear on camera, or the silence of a student who logged on but never spoke. To understand education during and after COVID-19, numbers alone are not enough. We need stories. Autoethnography provides a way of capturing those stories. As Ellis, Adams, and Bochner (2011) argue, autoethnography legitimises the researcher’s lived experience as an analytic resource, enabling the personal to speak to the cultural. Rather than erasing the researcher’s presence, it acknowledges that we are always entangled in the phenomena we study. In the case of COVID-19, where every teacher, student, and researcher was simultaneously living the crisis, this entanglement becomes not a weakness but a strength. Applied to education, autoethnography offers what Geertz (1973) called thick description : not only what happened, but how it felt and what it meant within particular cultural worlds. This is crucial in a pandemic context where the same digital tool—Zoom, Teams, WhatsApp—could be moralised in one setting and normalised in another. Large-scale surveys tell us who had access; autoethnography helps us understand what access meant. In the post-COVID landscape, this approach is especially valuable. Much of the literature has focused on the acute moment of closure, but fewer studies have traced what remained afterwards. Autoethnography is well-suited to this task, allowing the researcher to weave together memories of the crisis with follow-up accounts years later, capturing the lingering shadows of unfinished learning, teacher burnout, and cultural contestation over technology. This study therefore takes up autoethnography not simply as a method, but as a stance: a recognition that my own life—as a student in Egypt, a teacher in Saudi Arabia and the UK, and now a researcher—cannot be separated from the data I analyse. By drawing on my memories alongside interviews, field notes, and follow-up conversations through 2025, I aim to contribute a form of analysis that is not only empirical but experiential, situating education’s long shadow of COVID-19 within both cultural structures and lived stories. 3. Methodology 3.1 Research Design: Autoethnography This study adopts an autoethnographic approach , which combines personal narrative with cultural analysis. Autoethnography is particularly suited to contexts where the researcher is both participant and observer, weaving lived experience into the analysis of broader social phenomena (Ellis, Adams & Bochner, 2011; Adams, Holman Jones & Ellis, 2015). In the case of COVID-19, where all actors were simultaneously living the crisis, autoethnography enables a layered account: one that recognises the researcher’s history as a student in Egypt, teacher in Saudi Arabia and the UK, and now as a doctoral researcher. Rather than treating subjectivity as a limitation, autoethnography positions it as a resource, connecting micro-level experiences with macro-level structures (Chang, 2008). This stance is central to the present study, which seeks to understand not only the immediate effects of school closures but their long-term cultural implications. In particular, it allows the research to trace how experiences of inequality, resilience, and cultural negotiation with digital tools unfold differently in Egypt and the UK. To ensure credibility, the autoethnographic narrative is triangulated with teacher interviews, follow-up conversations, and field notes. Reflexive journaling was maintained throughout, making the researcher’s interpretive lens visible and transparent. This dual emphasis on lived experience and systematic analysis aligns with Anderson’s (2006) call for analytic autoethnography, which balances evocative narrative with cultural interpretation. 3.2 Data Collection Data were gathered across three distinct phases of the pandemic and its aftermath: Crisis Phase (2020–2021): 22 semi-structured interviews with teachers (12 Egypt, 10 UK) conducted via Zoom and WhatsApp. Field notes recorded during and immediately after interviews to capture tone, silences, interruptions, and contextual details. Documentary evidence , including school-issued online learning guidelines and shared lesson plans. Reopening Phase (2022): Follow-up interviews with a subset of teachers to explore how schools handled reopening, remediation of unfinished curricula, and cultural shifts in technology use. School visits and classroom observations (where access was possible) with accompanying visual field notes and photographs documenting material practices (e.g., chalkboards vs. laptops). Long Shadow Phase (2023–2025): 11 longitudinal interviews (6 Egypt, 5 UK) focusing on sustained impacts of COVID-19 closures on teaching, digital adoption, and professional identity. Collection of visual evidence of classroom practices and teacher-student interactions. Continued autoethnographic journaling of the researcher’s dual role as both participant (teacher/researcher) and observer. Across all phases, interviews followed a flexible guide that allowed participants to shape the conversation around their own experiences. This aligns with Brinkmann and Kvale’s (2015) argument that semi-structured interviews create space for meaning-making, rather than imposing rigid categories. 3.2 Researcher Reflections as Data In line with the principles of autoethnography, the researcher’s own memories, reflections, and embodied experiences were treated as core data . As Ellis, Adams, and Bochner (2011) note, autoethnography legitimises personal narrative as a way of connecting the self to culture. Reflexive practices included: Memory writing about schooling in Egypt, especially reliance on private tutoring, which later echoed in teachers’ narratives. Teaching reflections from Saudi Arabia and the UK, capturing frustrations with styluses, tablets, and digital platforms. Reflexive journaling throughout the project, documenting emotional responses to interviews (e.g., recognition, dissonance, discomfort). Embodied and sensory notes during school visits, including photographs and sketches of learning environments. These reflections were analysed not in isolation, but alongside interviews and field notes, forming what Anderson (2006) calls analytic autoethnography : a dialogic method where the researcher’s self becomes a lens to illuminate cultural patterns. 3. 3Data Analysis Analysis followed a thematic approach (Braun & Clarke, 2006), combined with an autoethnographic layering of personal narrative and participant accounts. The process included: Transcription and initial coding of all interviews, identifying recurring categories such as “unfinished curricula,” “digital barriers,” “parental restrictions,” and “teacher exhaustion.” Iterative comparison between Egyptian and UK datasets, noting both convergences (e.g., exhaustion, inequality) and divergences (e.g., moralisation of technology in Egypt vs. pragmatic adoption in the UK). Integration of reflexive data (personal memories, journals, field notes) to deepen cultural interpretation and highlight insider/outsider positionality. Temporal analysis across the three phases (2020–2025) to trace continuity and transformation in teaching, learning, and cultural practices. This approach ensured that the findings were both empirically grounded in teacher narratives and experientially enriched by the researcher’s own lived story. 3.4 Ethical Considerations This study adhered to established ethical standards for qualitative research (BERA, 2018; Creswell & Poth, 2018). Participants were provided with detailed information sheets and gave informed consent prior to interviews. All interviews were conducted voluntarily, with the right to withdraw at any stage. Confidentiality was ensured by the use of pseudonyms, anonymisation of school names, and secure digital storage of transcripts and field notes. Special care was taken with visual evidence (photographs, classroom sketches), ensuring that no identifying features of students or schools were retained. Given the autoethnographic nature of the study, reflexivity was also treated as an ethical practice. The researcher maintained a reflexive journal not only as an analytic tool but also to monitor power dynamics in interviews and to remain attentive to moments of resonance or discomfort. This follows Ellis (2007), who emphasises relational ethics—considering how research relationships continue to affect participants and researcher beyond the interview itself. Ethical approval was obtained through the host university’s research ethics committee. In conclusion, This chapter has outlined the methodological approach underpinning the study. Autoethnography was adopted to connect personal experience with broader cultural narratives, situating the researcher’s life history within the analysis of pandemic schooling. The chapter described the participant sample, phases of data collection (2020–2025), and the central role of researcher reflections as a form of data. It also detailed the thematic and comparative strategies of analysis, which combined interview transcripts, field notes, visual evidence, and autoethnographic journaling. By positioning teacher narratives alongside the researcher’s own memories, the methodology seeks to produce what Geertz (1973) calls thick description —accounts that are both personal and cultural, descriptive and interpretive. The ethical stance taken emphasised consent, confidentiality, and reflexivity as integral to the research process. The following chapter presents the Data Analysis and Findings , organised around six themes: (1) school closures and their global shadow, (2) digital divides, (3) religion, culture, and e-tools, (4) teachers’ resilience and emotional labour, (5) post-COVID transformations, and (6) shifting cultural meanings of education. 4. Data Analysis and Discussion This chapter presents six themes that emerged from the study, integrating teacher voices with my own reflections, and connecting them to the wider literature. In doing so, it demonstrates how the pandemic reshaped educational practices and cultural meanings in Egypt and the UK, not only during closures but into the years that followed. Theme 1. School Closures and Their Global Shadow “We did not finish a single term. Parents went straight back to tutoring, like school was just a formality.” (Egyptian teacher, Village school, 2021) In Egypt, closures reinforced what teachers called “unfinished schooling.” Classes were disrupted mid-term, exams cancelled or condensed, and parents turned immediately to tutoring. For many, this was not a new response but an intensification of a pattern that had long existed: formal school provided certificates, but private tutoring delivered learning (Sobhy, 2012). Teachers across Cairo and rural governorates reported the same phenomenon: closures deepened a reliance on shadow education. I recognised this in my own rural schooling. In our village classroom, lessons often ended abruptly—sometimes because the teacher had to leave for private work, sometimes because the electricity cut out and the day was dismissed early. I can still picture the cracked wooden benches, the chalk dust hanging in the air, and the silence after the teacher walked out. I remember carrying home half-completed exercise books, my parents telling me to wait for the tutor to “explain it properly.” What teachers described during COVID echoed the survival strategies of my own childhood: the tutor as the real teacher, the classroom as ceremony. In the UK, the shadow of closures looked different. “They logged on, but many didn’t show up. Sometimes I could see their names, but the cameras were off. It was like teaching into a void.” (UK teacher, Birmingham, 2020) Teachers repeatedly described students who were “present but absent.” Pupils logged into Teams or Zoom but did not engage. Some muted microphones and typed “done” into the chat; others logged in and disappeared. This reflects what Engzell, Frey, and Verhagen (2021) call “hidden inequality,” where formal attendance masked substantive absence. Follow-up interviews in 2023 confirmed that the effects of this disengagement were long-lasting. “When they came back, you could see the gaps. Year 7s who should have mastered writing were still struggling with a paragraph. It wasn’t just lost time—it followed them into the next years.” (UK teacher, London, 2023) Their silence was not new to me; I had already lived it in another form. In my village classroom in Egypt, silence came when lessons ended without completion, leaving gaps for tutors to fill. As a teacher in England during the lockdown, silence came from the grey boxes of Teams, faces hidden, microphones muted. Sometimes I caught a parent’s whisper prompting an answer, but more often nothing. Teaching became a guessing game: who was listening, who was gone? In both contexts, silence carried inequality—unseen, but heavy. The Egyptian and UK experiences show different but parallel shadows. In Egypt, closures reinforced the structural reliance on tutoring, confirming the de facto privatisation of learning (Sobhy, 2012; Assaad & Krafft, 2022). In the UK, closures exposed fragility in digital engagement: students were technically connected but substantively absent (Andrew et al., 2020; Engzell et al., 2021). Globally, similar patterns have been documented, with UNESCO (2021) highlighting gendered exclusion in digital learning and the OECD (2022) warning that post-COVID inequalities risk becoming entrenched for a generation. The autoethnographic reflections illustrate the cultural continuity of these shadows. As a rural student in Egypt, I lived the incompleteness of state schooling and the inevitability of tutoring. As a UK teacher during the pandemic, I lived the emptiness of digital silence. Both experiences mirror teachers’ accounts, showing that closures made inequality visible in different forms: through dependence on tutoring in Egypt, and through disengagement in the UK. The “shadow” of COVID, therefore, is not only metaphorical but structural: it lingers in classrooms, tutoring centres, and digital platforms, shaping educational trajectories years after reopening. Theme 2. Digital Divides – More Than Access “The internet was there, the laptop was there — but the father said, ‘No, she cannot use it.’ ” (Egyptian teacher, Rural governorate, 2021) For many teachers in Egypt, the challenge was not only devices or bandwidth but cultural permission. Families, particularly in rural areas, restricted daughters’ participation in online classes. Concerns about propriety, distraction, and morality meant that even when infrastructure was available, it was not always accessible. This reminded me of my own school days in the village. We had no computer lab, no internet in classrooms, and at home the family television sat like a shrine in the corner, turned on only at agreed times. Later, when I was old enough to use a laptop, my parents allowed it only under supervision, warning me of “bad habits.” The device was there, but access was rationed. Hearing teachers describe fathers refusing daughters’ online participation during COVID, I recognised the same anxieties. Access was never only about wires and screens—it was about trust, morality, and control. In the UK, teachers described a different kind of divide. “They had the laptop — the school gave it to them — but when I rang, I could hear the PlayStation in the background.” (UK teacher, London, 2021) Here the problem was not lack of devices but competing demands for attention. Schools distributed laptops and Wi-Fi dongles, yet online lessons had to compete with gaming consoles, siblings, and household distractions. By 2025, the divide had not disappeared but shifted: “The laptops we gave out in 2020 are now breaking down, and the funding for replacements has gone. Some kids are back to sharing a phone between them.” (UK teacher, Birmingham, 2025) I too encountered this divide as a teacher. I remember watching students freeze mid-lesson: “bad connection,” they said, but their eyes flickered with the light of another tab. Sometimes YouTube, sometimes Fortnite. In Egypt, my family policed my internet use, limiting distraction through prohibition. In the UK, students policed nothing, distractions multiplying inside the very tool designed for learning. In both cases, the device was present, but learning was precarious. The accounts show that the digital divide is more than a technical issue of access. In Egypt, it was shaped by cultural anxieties, gendered restrictions, and moral concerns (Herrera, 2006; Khalifa, 2023). In the UK, it was less about access than engagement: laptops could be provided, but meaningful participation could not be guaranteed (Andrew et al., 2020). Scholars have long argued that technology is never neutral. Selwyn (2016) highlights how digital use is always culturally mediated, while Warschauer (2004) reframes the divide as a matter of social inclusion as much as infrastructure. Global reports echo this. The World Bank (2021) noted “second-generation digital divides,” where access exists but effective use is unequal; UNICEF (2020) warned that even when devices are distributed, “home environments and parental mediation” shape outcomes. Autoethnographically, my memories bridge these stories: the rationed television and supervised laptop of my Egyptian home, the distracted screens of my UK classroom. Both reveal that inequality lives not only outside the screen, in infrastructure, but inside it, in attention, trust, and culture. Theme 3. Religion, Culture, and E-Tools “For him, it was not suitable — his daughter should never be on camera.” (Egyptian teacher, village school, 2022) In Egypt, technology was not only a logistical or technical issue; it was framed through moral and religious concerns. Teachers described families — particularly in conservative or rural contexts — who resisted e-learning for daughters, fearing exposure to inappropriate content or socialisation. Even when schools reopened in 2022, roughly one in five families opposed digital education on cultural or religious grounds, preferring face-to-face or tutoring alternatives. I was not surprised by this. Growing up in my village home, I learned early that the internet was not simply a tool but a moral terrain. My parents monitored my use strictly, warning me against “immoral” websites and friendships. Sometimes I was told not to sit alone with the computer; a male cousin was asked to join me in the room. These rules were not only about distraction but about honour, propriety, and the fear of what might happen if the screen became a window into another world. Listening to Egyptian teachers describe fathers refusing cameras for daughters, I recognised the same script I had lived: technology as temptation, the screen as risk. By contrast, teachers in UK Islamic schools reported few such restrictions. “We used Teams without any issues. Even in Islamic schools, there was no religious problem — the challenge was just making them turn cameras on.” (UK teacher, Manchester, 2021) Here, religion did not prevent digital adoption. Islamic schools pragmatically embraced Microsoft Teams and Zoom, framing challenges as logistical (old devices, weak Wi-Fi) or motivational (students not switching cameras on). Moral discourses around gender and propriety rarely surfaced. This contrast struck me deeply. In the Egyptian village, as a teenager, I lived with digital bans framed as religious protection. In Manchester, I walked into an Islamic school that had adopted Teams as standard practice. The same religion produced different practices. I found myself surprised: the very camera that was forbidden in my Egyptian home was ordinary in a UK Islamic classroom. It was a reminder that technology is never simply about religion — it is about how religion interacts with culture, politics, and place. The Egyptian and UK cases reveal how cultural and religious discourses shape the adoption of e-tools differently. In Egypt, families often moralised digital tools, linking cameras, internet use, and online interaction to broader anxieties about gender and propriety. This echoes Herrera’s (2006) argument that educational change in the Middle East is inseparable from moral discourses and gender norms. Recent studies confirm that post-COVID digital adoption in Egypt remains filtered through these concerns, with many parents continuing to see online education as potentially unsafe for girls (Khalifa, 2023). In the UK, even in faith-based schools, adoption was pragmatic. Challenges were not moral but practical — devices breaking, budgets shrinking, students hiding behind black screens. This reflects research showing that digital tools in Western Islamic schools are framed as pedagogical resources rather than moral threats (Shah, 2012). Scholars remind us that technology is always culturally embedded. Warschauer (2004) insists that access is not just technical but social, and Selwyn (2016) highlights how tools acquire meaning through context. The Egyptian/UK comparison demonstrates this vividly: the same e-tool — a camera on Microsoft Teams — was interpreted as a moral hazard in one setting and a mundane classroom requirement in another. Autoethnographically, I bridge these contrasts. My own childhood experience of restricted internet use mirrors Egyptian teachers’ accounts of moral anxieties. My later surprise at seeing Islamic schools in the UK adopt Teams without hesitation illustrates how culture, not religion alone, shapes digital practice. The same faith, two contexts, two meanings. COVID-19 did not erase these differences; it illuminated them. Theme 4. Teachers, Resilience, and Emotional Labour “We had no contact with students at all. It was like teaching into emptiness.” (Egyptian teacher, Village school, 2020) In Egypt’s village schools, teachers described the lockdown as a rupture. With little infrastructure, minimal training, and few resources, many felt paralysed. Internet connections were weak or non-existent, and communication with students was rare. For some, teaching stopped altogether. “Every evening I called parents. Sometimes I was more exhausted than the students.” (UK teacher, Manchester Muslim school, 2021) In contrast, teachers in the Manchester Islamic school were connected, but overstretched. They used Teams pragmatically, but this required long hours of follow-up. Teachers described phoning parents to chase homework, troubleshooting IT with families, and managing pastoral needs alongside academic lessons. I found echoes of myself in both accounts. As a child in a village classroom in Egypt, I had already seen how fragile teaching could be: lessons abandoned when teachers left early or resources ran out. The silence of those days echoed in the Egyptian teacher’s words during COVID. Later, as a teacher in the UK, I too felt the exhaustion of blurred boundaries. In a Muslim school in Manchester, I juggled Teams lessons, parental WhatsApp messages, and my own anxieties. I sometimes felt I was carrying more than my students — their fears, their frustrations, and their families’ expectations. The differences between resignation in Egypt and exhaustion in the UK reveal the varied weight of emotional labour. In Egypt’s rural schools, teachers described a loss of agency: a sense of being unable to reach their students at all. In the UK Muslim school, teachers had agency but at a personal cost, working far beyond the school day. Teachers’ narratives confirm the literature on the intensification of emotional labour during COVID. MacIntyre, Gregersen, and Mercer (2020) describe how teachers were asked to remain resilient while adapting to unfamiliar digital demands. Kim and Asbury (2020) show how role expansion blurred the line between professional and personal life. In the village schools of Egypt, this expansion was blocked by structural absence — no training, no connectivity — leaving teachers powerless. In the UK Islamic school, expansion was unrestrained — constant communication, constant responsibility — leaving teachers exhausted. Kelchtermans (2009) argues that teacher identity is inherently vulnerable, always negotiated between expectations and capacity. Day and Gu (2010) caution against romanticising resilience, reminding us that resilience often disguises systemic shortcomings. Post-pandemic research supports this view: Allen et al. (2022) found high levels of burnout among teachers in England, while UNESCO (2021) reported attrition among teachers in rural and low-resource settings. Autoethnographically, I bridge these stories. I remember the silence of my village classroom in Egypt, where education often stopped abruptly. And I remember the exhaustion of Manchester, where I taught into the night across screens and phone calls. Resilience was demanded in both places — but in Egypt, it meant accepting absence; in the UK, it meant surviving excess. Both came at a cost rarely acknowledged in policy or research. Theme 5. Post-COVID Transformations (2022–2025) “Even now, parents prefer tutoring. It’s stronger than before. School is just for exams.” (Egyptian teacher, Village school, 2024) Teachers in the Egyptian village school described how the pandemic had not ended when schools reopened. Instead, tutoring became even more central. Parents who once treated tutoring as a supplement now viewed it as the core of their children’s learning. Families saved to pay tutors first, treating school attendance as little more than a ticket to exams. In this way, the pandemic accelerated a shift that had been unfolding for decades — the marginalisation of formal schooling in favour of shadow education (Sobhy, 2012; Assaad & Krafft, 2022). For me, this was déjà vu. As a child in my own village classroom, I had already learned that “real education” often happened elsewhere. The official school day ended early, teachers left, and we carried unfinished lessons home. It was in the cramped tutoring rooms — crowded with students, the air thick with dust and chatter — where understanding finally came. When I listened to teachers in 2024 describing how parents now relied on tutors more than ever, I felt as if my own childhood classroom had simply stretched forward into the present. COVID had not changed the culture of learning in the village — it had confirmed it. In the UK Muslim school, teachers also reported that the effects of the pandemic lingered. “We still see the gaps. Year 7s who missed their early writing are struggling even now. It followed them through.” (UK teacher, Manchester, 2023) Learning gaps did not disappear with reopening. Teachers spoke of “lost cohorts,” children who had missed foundational literacy and numeracy and carried those absences into later years. Despite catch-up programmes, the gaps remained most pronounced among disadvantaged families. By 2025, new challenges had emerged. “The devices we handed out in 2020 are now old. Funding is gone. We are back to chasing students who share a phone between siblings.” (UK teacher, Manchester, 2025) Digital inequality resurfaced, but in a new form: not the absence of devices, but the decline of ageing equipment and shrinking budgets. As a teacher in Manchester, I saw these shadows every day. Students who had fallen behind in 2020 still hesitated with writing in 2023, their confidence fragile, their sentences stuttering across the page. Parents messaged me late at night on WhatsApp: “Can you check his work? He’s worried.” Sometimes I answered at midnight, my phone glowing in the dark, as tired as they were. Politicians spoke of “recovery,” but in our classrooms it felt uneven, patchy, unfinished. COVID had ended as a virus, but not as an educational reality. The Egyptian and UK cases show that the effects of COVID extended well beyond the crisis years. In Egypt’s village school, tutoring became further entrenched, confirming the deep privatisation of learning (Sobhy, 2012; Assaad & Krafft, 2022). In the Manchester Muslim school, learning loss persisted, echoing Engzell, Frey, and Verhagen’s (2021) finding that early gaps widened into long-term inequalities. Global evidence reinforces these patterns. The World Bank (2022) warned of escalating “learning poverty,” where children who missed early foundations risk never catching up. OECD (2022) described the pandemic as a “long shadow,” affecting students’ transitions into secondary school. UNESCO (2023) noted that recovery has been “deeply uneven,” with rural schools and disadvantaged communities still struggling. UNICEF (2021) highlighted how the most marginalised children — rural, poor, or female — were least likely to return to stable learning pathways. Autoethnographically, my memories bridge these findings. As a student in a rural Egyptian school, I lived in a system where tutoring was the real classroom and schools were ceremonial. As a teacher in Manchester, I witnessed students carrying learning loss forward year after year, their gaps becoming scars. COVID was not a rupture but an accelerant: it deepened Egypt’s reliance on tutoring and prolonged the UK’s digital and educational inequalities. Its traces remain visible — in tutoring centres, in battered laptops, in unfinished exercise books, and in the tired eyes of students still catching up. Theme 6. Shifting Cultural Meanings of Education “Parents told me: ‘School is only for the certificate — the real learning is with the tutor.’ ” (Egyptian teacher, Village school, 2023) Teachers in the Egyptian village school explained how the pandemic did not only disrupt education but reshaped how families valued it. Many parents openly described formal schooling as a bureaucratic necessity, while tutoring carried the cultural meaning of “real” education. For some families, digital tools were dismissed as morally risky or pedagogically weak, reinforcing older hierarchies between classroom, home, and tutoring. This was not strange to me. As a child in a village classroom, I often heard the same message: “Attend school, but learn from the tutor.” I remember my parents calculating tutoring fees before buying new clothes, prioritising education through private means rather than public provision. COVID did not invent this mindset — it amplified it, bringing what was once whispered into the open. In the village, the cultural script of education shifted from subtle reliance on tutoring to an almost open rejection of school as anything beyond an exam centre. In the Manchester Muslim school, cultural meanings shifted in different ways. “Parents began to see us more as partners. They were on Teams, on WhatsApp, checking everything. For some, school moved into the home.” (UK teacher, Manchester, 2022) Teachers described how digital tools blurred boundaries between school and family life. Parents, often mothers, became co-educators, monitoring lessons, submitting homework, and directly messaging teachers. Some welcomed this partnership, while others felt it was intrusive. The school, once a distinct space, was redefined as something that could enter the living room. I experienced this firsthand. During lockdown, my phone buzzed constantly with WhatsApp messages from parents: questions, complaints, requests for reassurance. In one sense, it made the school more transparent; in another, it dissolved the boundaries that once protected teachers’ private lives. Education became a shared, and sometimes contested, cultural space between teachers, parents, and screens. The difference between the Egyptian and UK cases lies in how the cultural meanings were renegotiated. In Egypt, COVID intensified the idea that formal schooling is hollow , with tutoring elevated as the trusted site of learning. In Manchester, COVID reframed schooling as permeable , moving into family spaces and reshaping the parent–teacher relationship. Education is never only technical — it is cultural, bound up with trust, identity, and meaning. In Egypt’s village school, the pandemic confirmed a cultural hierarchy that places tutoring above schooling, reflecting long-standing structural inequalities (Sobhy, 2012; Assaad & Krafft, 2022). In Manchester’s Muslim school, the pandemic fostered a new cultural negotiation: parents became more visible in the daily work of schooling, echoing Vincent’s (2017) research on parental involvement and digital mediation. Globally, studies confirm that the pandemic reshaped cultural meanings of education. UNESCO (2021) documented how many communities in low-resource settings came to distrust formal schooling and re-invest in community or private alternatives. OECD (2022) reported that parental involvement rose sharply across Europe, creating new tensions between home and school. UNICEF (2021) highlighted that for many families, particularly in conservative or religious contexts, digital learning was not a neutral tool but a cultural challenge. Autoethnographically, I see these cultural shifts as continuities with my own life. In my Egyptian village, I lived the downgrading of formal schooling and the elevation of tutoring. As a teacher in Manchester, I lived the blurring of school and home, as parents monitored lessons through WhatsApp and Teams. In both contexts, COVID redefined what “school” meant: in Egypt, a certificate-giving shell; in Manchester, a porous institution spilling into family life. These cultural meanings are as lasting as the learning gaps themselves, shaping how education is lived and valued long after the pandemic. In conclusion, this section has traced six interwoven themes across Egyptian village schools and a Manchester Muslim school: the unfinished schooling of closures, the cultural depth of digital divides, the moralisation and normalisation of e-tools, the emotional labour of teachers, the lingering post-COVID transformations, and the shifting cultural meanings of education. Together, these accounts reveal that COVID-19 was not only a temporary disruption but a catalyst that magnified existing inequalities, reshaped practices, and redefined how education is lived. The chapter shows that these effects endure into the present, carrying a long shadow that continues to shape classrooms, families, and teachers’ identities. 5. Conclusion This study has examined the long-term implications of COVID-19 on teaching, learning, and culture through the cases of an Egyptian village school and a Manchester Muslim school. Using autoethnography, I combined teacher interviews, field notes, and my own lived experiences as both student and teacher to reveal how education was disrupted, reshaped, and culturally redefined. Key Findings Closures amplified existing inequalities : In Egypt, unfinished schooling reinforced reliance on tutoring as the “real” classroom; in the UK, digital silence exposed disengagement and hidden inequality. Digital divides were cultural as well as technical : In Egypt, access was filtered through gendered and moral restrictions; in the UK, devices existed but were undermined by distraction and ageing infrastructure. Religion and culture shaped e-tool use differently : Egyptian families often moralised digital learning, especially for girls, while UK Islamic schools pragmatically normalised Teams and Zoom. Teachers carried emotional labour : In Egypt, teachers described resignation under structural neglect; in Manchester, exhaustion from constant communication and blurred boundaries. Post-COVID transformations persisted : Tutoring deepened in Egypt, while in the UK, “lost cohorts” and broken devices signalled inequalities that never disappeared. Cultural meanings of education shifted : In Egypt, school was reduced to certification while tutoring embodied learning; in Manchester, digital tools blurred school-home boundaries, making parents co-educators. Research Gaps & Recommendations Longitudinal data in rural contexts : More sustained follow-up studies are needed in rural schools in the Global South, where post-COVID transformations may diverge sharply from urban narratives. Faith-based schooling : Comparative research on Muslim schools across different countries could illuminate how religion and culture mediate technology adoption beyond simplistic East/West binaries. Teacher wellbeing : Policy must move beyond the language of “resilience” and address systemic factors that exhaust or marginalise teachers, particularly in low-resource contexts. Parental roles in digital education : Future studies should examine how home-school boundaries have been permanently altered by WhatsApp, Teams, and other tools, and what this means for privacy, trust, and equity. Policy interventions : Both Egypt and the UK need sustained investment in infrastructure (devices, connectivity) and teacher training, but also cultural engagement — addressing moral anxieties in Egypt and motivational challenges in the UK. At the end, I believe COVID-19 was not a temporary rupture but an accelerant. It magnified inequalities, accelerated cultural shifts, and redrew the boundaries between school, family, and technology. Its shadow lingers not only in test scores or devices but in lived memories — the unfinished exercise books of an Egyptian village child, the grey Teams screens of a Manchester teacher, the tired eyes of students still catching up. To understand education after COVID, we must look beyond recovery statistics and attend to these lived realities, where culture, memory, and inequality continue to shape what schooling means. Declarations Ethical Approval This study was conducted in accordance with the ethical standards of the University of Greater Manchester’s Research Ethics Committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments. Ethical approval was granted by the University of Greater Manchester Research Ethics Committee in February 2022 . Additional approval was obtained from the research departments of the two participating schools: the Muslim school in Manchester, UK, in March 2022 , and the village school in Egypt in June 2022 . Informed Consent All participants were provided with detailed information sheets outlining the study’s purpose, scope, and methods before data collection. Written informed consent was obtained prior to participation in interviews and follow-up conversations. Participants were informed of their right to withdraw at any stage without consequence, and of the measures taken to ensure anonymity and confidentiality. Informed consent was collected between July 2022 and May 2025 . Author Contribution M.H. (Mahmoud Harb) conceived and designed the study, conducted data collection (teacher interviews, follow-up conversations, and autoethnographic reflections), carried out the data analysis, and wrote the manuscript. M.H. approved the final version of the manuscript and is accountable for all aspects of the work. Data Availability The qualitative data that underpin this study (interview transcripts, follow-up conversations, field notes, and reflexive journals) are not publicly available due to confidentiality agreements with participants. Anonymised excerpts that support the findings of this research are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. References Adams TE, Jones H, S., Ellis C (2015) Autoethnography. Oxford University Press Allen R, Jerrim J, Sims S (2022) How did the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic affect teacher wellbeing? Oxf Rev Educ 48(1):1–17 Allen R, Jerrim J, Sims S (2022) The impact of COVID-19 on teachers: A review of evidence. Educational Rev 74(3):319–338. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2021.1998329 Anderson L (2006) Analytic autoethnography. 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Br J Educ Psychol 90(4):1062–1083 MacIntyre PD, Gregersen T, Mercer S (2020) Language teachers’ coping strategies during the COVID-19 conversion to online teaching: Correlations with stress, wellbeing and negative emotions. System 94:102352. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2020.102352 MacIntyre PD, Gregersen T, Mercer S (2020) Language teachers’ coping strategies during the COVID-19 global pandemic. System 94:102352 OECD (2022) The state of school education: One year into the COVID pandemic. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/201dde84-en OECD (2022) The state of school education: One year into the COVID pandemic. OECD Publishing OECD (2022) The state of school education: One year into the COVID pandemic. OECD Publishing Selwyn N (2016) Education and technology: Key issues and debates. Bloomsbury Selwyn N (2016) Education and technology: Key issues and debates (2nd ed.). Bloomsbury Selwyn N (2016) Education and technology: Key issues and debates (2nd ed.). 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UNESCO UNESCO (2021) When schools shut: Gendered impacts of COVID-19 school closures . UNESCO. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000379270 UNESCO (2021) When schools shut: Gendered impacts of COVID-19 school closures. UNESCO UNESCO (2023) Ensuring recovery for all: Global education monitoring report. UNESCO UNICEF (2020) COVID-19: Are children able to continue learning during school closures? UNICEF UNICEF (2021) Building back equal: Girls back to school guide. UNICEF Warschauer M (2004) Technology and social inclusion: Rethinking the digital divide. MIT Press Warschauer M (2004) Technology and social inclusion: Rethinking the digital divide. MIT Press Warschauer M (2004) Technology and social inclusion: Rethinking the digital divide. MIT Press World Bank (2021) Realizing the future of learning: From learning poverty to learning for everyone, everywhere. World Bank World Bank (2022) The State of Global Learning Poverty: 2022 Update. World Bank Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-7510051","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":529358225,"identity":"c3cc7569-e5ff-4fba-986e-f619cc049685","order_by":0,"name":"Mahmoud Harb","email":"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAZAAAAAyAQMAAABI0h/eAAAABlBMVEX///8AAABVwtN+AAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAAA3ElEQVRIiWNgGAWjYBACAyBmBjH42RtAXAsStEj2HABxJUjQYnAjAUQRocWc/eyzxwU19/IMbj6/uuFHgQQDf3t3Al4tlj3p5sYzjhUXS97OKbvZA3SYxJmzG/A77EAamzQPW0Ji3+2ctBs8QC0GErkEtJx/BtTyLyGx4eaZtJt/iNJyA2gLb1tC4oQb7MduE2fLjWfsxrx9CcWSPTlst2UMJHgI++V8Gttjnm8Jefzsx5/dfPPHRo6/vRe/FiBgAxEJDAw8oDhi4CGkHFkL+wNiVI+CUTAKRsEIBACakEfIoNuwOQAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==","orcid":"","institution":"University of Greater Manchester","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"Mahmoud","middleName":"","lastName":"Harb","suffix":""}],"badges":[],"createdAt":"2025-09-01 15:38:21","currentVersionCode":1,"declarations":"","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7510051/v1","doiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7510051/v1","draftVersion":[],"editorialEvents":[],"editorialNote":"","failedWorkflow":false,"files":[{"id":93718225,"identity":"d9a2de08-665f-4d48-8b89-266f26360d72","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-16 20:48:22","extension":"docx","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":42569,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Beyondnonames.docx","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7510051/v1/ceb1e9bae9a2092154b9f625.docx"},{"id":93718223,"identity":"338672b0-574f-4f0e-b6dc-899c60ab4e74","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-16 20:48:22","extension":"json","order_by":1,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":3500,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"3538d0e471e8498f823dc5953c653a86.json","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7510051/v1/44fba996ac77583545fcb170.json"},{"id":93718730,"identity":"181177a7-05b0-4ad6-8a1a-8991422c8076","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-16 20:56:22","extension":"xml","order_by":2,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":118971,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"3538d0e471e8498f823dc5953c653a861enriched.xml","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7510051/v1/89e8645de0edbd444385372a.xml"},{"id":93718227,"identity":"4ed57287-21e9-4937-8c71-01a255787ba6","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-16 20:48:22","extension":"xml","order_by":3,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":114602,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"3538d0e471e8498f823dc5953c653a861structuring.xml","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7510051/v1/3a0a1f9e2dd38fafde37ce67.xml"},{"id":93718226,"identity":"7e955882-1c82-40ef-9c7b-aed7ce3cf9e3","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-16 20:48:22","extension":"html","order_by":4,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":128164,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"earlyproof.html","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7510051/v1/0f0a2755a677cb79f09ba603.html"},{"id":106961780,"identity":"821db717-1060-45f2-a64a-27d89445413d","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-04-15 09:27:00","extension":"pdf","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":1212005,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"manuscript.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7510051/v1/81a13027-f637-42e6-b638-b93974526319.pdf"}],"financialInterests":"No competing interests reported.","formattedTitle":"\u003cp\u003eBeyond the Closure: Autoethnographic Insights into the Lasting Impacts of COVID-19 on Education in Egypt and the UK\u003c/p\u003e","fulltext":[{"header":"1. Introduction","content":"\u003cp\u003eI still remember the silence when schools closed their doors during COVID-19. Classrooms that once echoed with the noise of learning and laughter became empty, replaced by the glow of screens that many children could not access. For me, this silence was not unfamiliar. Growing up in Egypt, I had long witnessed how education could be absent, disrupted, or shifted into private tutoring outside the school. The closures of 2020–2021 did not simply pause learning—they reopened old questions about inequality, culture, and the meaning of education itself.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe pandemic caused the largest disruption of education in modern history, affecting over 1.6 billion learners worldwide (UNESCO, 2021). Schools were forced into emergency remote teaching, exposing stark inequalities in access to technology, differences in cultural acceptance of digital tools, and the emotional labour placed on teachers (Donnelly \u0026amp; Patrinos, 2021; MacIntyre et al., 2020). While these closures were temporary, their legacies continue to shape education in profound ways.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis article examines these long-term implications in two contrasting contexts: Egypt, where systemic inequalities and cultural factors limited the adoption of digital learning, and the United Kingdom, where schools had the infrastructure to transition online but faced challenges of engagement, equity, and sustainability. By focusing particularly on the role of religion and the use of e-tools, the study highlights how technology in education is never neutral but always mediated by cultural values, institutional structures, and personal histories (Selwyn, 2016).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy position in this study is both insider and outsider. As an Egyptian student who relied on tutoring to survive an underfunded school system, I knew what it meant to experience “unfinished learning.” As a teacher and doctoral researcher in the UK, I observed a different world—where laptops were provided, but participation was uneven, and teachers carried the weight of monitoring and motivating students online. This dual perspective shaped my choice of autoethnography as methodology, enabling me to weave my story with those of the teachers I interviewed.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe research draws on interviews with teachers in Egypt and the UK, follow-up conversations conducted between 2022 and 2025, my field notes, and my personal memories. Together, these narratives reveal six themes: continuities and disruptions in schooling, digital divides, religion and resistance to e-tools, teacher identity and emotional labour, post-COVID transformations, and cultural shifts in the meaning of education.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe aim is not only to document how schools navigated closures but to explore what these experiences reveal about the long shadow of the pandemic on teaching, learning, and culture. The article argues that COVID-19 was not just a temporary disruption but a cultural turning point that continues to redefine education in both Egypt and the UK.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe article is structured as follows. The next section reviews relevant literature on school closures, digital divides, and cultural perspectives on technology. The methodology section outlines the autoethnographic approach and data sources. The main body presents the data analysis and findings across six themes, blending teachers’ narratives with my own reflections. The conclusion summarises the contributions of the study and identifies directions for policy and future research.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"2. Literature Review","content":"\u003cp\u003eWhen schools closed in March 2020, it was described as the greatest educational disruption in living memory. UNESCO (2021) reported that more than 1.6 billion learners were affected globally. Governments rushed to provide emergency responses, but what became clear was that the crisis exposed fractures that were already present: unequal access to technology, cultural barriers to adoption, and the emotional toll on teachers (Donnelly \u0026amp; Patrinos, 2021; OECD, 2020).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e2.1. School Closures and Their Global Shadow\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen schools closed, the silence was counted in days of lost instruction and percentages of students disconnected. Yet the literature reminds us that the silence had already been there, built into fragile foundations long before the pandemic. COVID-19 did not create these fractures—it magnified them.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn Egypt, research has long documented the heavy reliance on private tutoring, where formal schooling often provides only partial coverage of the curriculum (Sobhy, 2012). During COVID-19, this parallel system became the default. Families leaned more heavily on tutors to fill the gaps left by unfinished school terms, deepening a dependence that was already entrenched. Post-pandemic accounts suggest that tutoring not only persisted but expanded after schools reopened, becoming further normalised as the “real” schooling for many students (Assaad \u0026amp; Krafft, 2022).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the UK, closures revealed a different kind of vulnerability. Survey and administrative data show that although online platforms were widely available, student engagement was highly uneven (Andrew et al., 2020). Engzell, Frey, and Verhagen (2021) found that learning loss was steepest among disadvantaged pupils and in early year groups, where parental involvement was crucial. Follow-up evidence into 2022–2023 confirms that these gaps did not disappear with reopening but persisted across cohorts, affecting secondary transitions and widening attainment inequalities (EEF, 2023).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTaken together, the literature shows that closures did not create inequality—they made it visible. In Egypt, inequality spoke through the rise of tutoring as a shadow system; in the UK, it spoke through the silence of disengaged pupils behind their screens. These shadows have not faded with reopening but continue to shape education in both contexts.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e2. 2. Digital Divides: More Than Access\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt the start of the pandemic, the digital divide was framed in simple terms: who had a device, and who did not. Yet as the literature shows, the reality was far more complex. Access was only the first barrier; what families and students could\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003edo\u003c/em\u003e with that access depended on culture, confidence, and support.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn Egypt, the divide was often stark. Rural families had little or no connectivity, while in urban areas, devices were scarce and frequently shared among siblings (El-Said \u0026amp; Youssef, 2021). For many households, schooling stopped entirely. In contrast, urban elites turned to Zoom or WhatsApp, creating a parallel digital privilege (Trucano, 2020). In the UK, the government moved quickly to distribute laptops and Wi-Fi dongles to families in need (Andrew et al., 2020). Yet even here, teachers discovered that access did not guarantee participation: some students logged on without engaging, while others lacked the parental support or home space to use devices effectively (Hutchinson, 2021).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eScholars such as Selwyn (2016) and Warschauer (2004) remind us that technology is never neutral—it is embedded in social and cultural contexts. Post-pandemic studies confirm that inequalities in online learning are sustained less by infrastructure than by differences in home environments, parental mediation, and student confidence (OECD, 2022). Digital divides therefore persisted beyond the closures, shaping how families continued to view the value of e-learning after 2022.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe literature suggests that digital inequality is both technical and cultural. In Egypt, exclusion often lived\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003eoutside\u003c/em\u003e the screen: for many students, there was no device to turn on, no connection to join. In the UK, it lived\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003einside\u003c/em\u003e the screen: students had access but lacked the resources, routines, or motivation to engage. The pandemic made these divides visible, and the years since reopening show that they remain deeply rooted in the educational landscapes of both countries.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e2.3. Religion, Culture, and E-Tools\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor some families, the camera was not just a window for learning—it was a window into morality. The literature shows that in certain contexts, e-tools were not only technical innovations but cultural battlegrounds, shaped by anxieties around religion, propriety, and gender norms.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn Egypt, research documents how education is entangled with moral discourses and family authority (Herrera, 2006). During COVID-19, these dynamics intensified. Parents—particularly in more conservative or rural areas—restricted their daughters’ participation in online lessons, fearing exposure to inappropriate content or unsupervised socialising (El-Deghaidy \u0026amp; Mansour, 2021). Post-pandemic studies suggest that while acceptance of e-learning has grown, resistance has not disappeared: as late as 2023, roughly one in five families continued to express reluctance to use digital platforms on cultural or religious grounds (Khalifa, 2023).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBy contrast, UK-based studies—including those in Islamic schools—report a far more pragmatic approach. Teachers integrated platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom without cultural controversy (Kim \u0026amp; Asbury, 2020). Here, barriers were logistical (aging laptops, shrinking budgets) or pedagogical (students muting cameras, limited motivation), but religion itself did not obstruct adoption. E-learning was framed as practical rather than moral, a necessary adaptation rather than a cultural risk.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe literature therefore highlights a striking contrast: the same platform could be moralised in one context and normalised in another. In Egypt, online learning was sometimes viewed through the lens of faith and morality; in the UK, even in faith-based schools, it was viewed through the lens of functionality. Post-COVID, this divergence persists. E-tools remain a site of negotiation in Egypt, while in the UK they have largely been absorbed into the normal landscape of teaching.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e2. 4. Teachers, Resilience, and Emotional Labour\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor many teachers, the pandemic turned resilience into a second timetable—one they never asked for. Overnight, they were expected to master new digital platforms, maintain daily contact with families, and safeguard students’ wellbeing, all while managing their own uncertainties and fears. The literature consistently shows how this rapid expansion of roles created both strain and innovation (MacIntyre, Gregersen \u0026amp; Mercer, 2020; Kim \u0026amp; Asbury, 2020).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn Egypt, systemic neglect and limited infrastructure meant that many teachers were left unable to maintain meaningful contact with students. Studies report widespread frustration and resignation: some teachers admitted that they “had no communication” with students at all during closures (El-Said \u0026amp; Youssef, 2021). The absence of institutional support left individual educators feeling powerless.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the UK, the story was not absence but overload. Teachers quickly adopted platforms such as Microsoft Teams, ClassDojo, and Zoom, but at the cost of exhaustion. Kim and Asbury (2020) capture this sentiment with the words of one teacher:\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003e“It was like the rug had been pulled from under you.”\u003c/em\u003e Accounts of phoning parents nightly or monitoring engagement late into the evening reflect how the emotional labour of teaching intensified, even as technical solutions expanded.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTheoretically, this resonates with Kelchtermans’ (2009) argument that teacher identity is inherently vulnerable and continuously renegotiated in response to shifting demands. Day and Gu (2010) caution against romanticising “resilience”: while teachers demonstrated remarkable adaptability, this often masked deeper systemic failures. Post-pandemic evidence reinforces this concern. Allen, Jerrim, and Sims (2022) note that many UK teachers reported lingering fatigue and burnout in 2022–2023, while Egyptian teachers described long-term disillusionment with online initiatives that were abandoned once schools reopened.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTaken together, the literature shows that resilience is not a limitless personal trait but a relational and structural outcome. Teachers in both contexts carried the emotional weight of the closures, and many continue to carry it long after classrooms reopened. Their resilience kept education afloat, but it also left scars—reminders that resilience comes at a cost when systems fail to share the burden.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e2.5. Autoethnography and the Lived Story of Education\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs the pandemic unfolded, much of the research on education was dominated by numbers: days of learning lost, percentages of students offline, predicted economic costs. These accounts were vital, but they often left out the texture of lived experience—the frustration of a teacher phoning parents late into the night, the unease of a family debating whether their daughter could appear on camera, or the silence of a student who logged on but never spoke. To understand education during and after COVID-19, numbers alone are not enough. We need stories.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAutoethnography provides a way of capturing those stories. As Ellis, Adams, and Bochner (2011) argue, autoethnography legitimises the researcher’s lived experience as an analytic resource, enabling the personal to speak to the cultural. Rather than erasing the researcher’s presence, it acknowledges that we are always entangled in the phenomena we study. In the case of COVID-19, where every teacher, student, and researcher was simultaneously living the crisis, this entanglement becomes not a weakness but a strength.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eApplied to education, autoethnography offers what Geertz (1973) called\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003ethick description\u003c/em\u003e: not only what happened, but how it felt and what it meant within particular cultural worlds. This is crucial in a pandemic context where the same digital tool—Zoom, Teams, WhatsApp—could be moralised in one setting and normalised in another. Large-scale surveys tell us who had access; autoethnography helps us understand what access meant.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the post-COVID landscape, this approach is especially valuable. Much of the literature has focused on the acute moment of closure, but fewer studies have traced what remained afterwards. Autoethnography is well-suited to this task, allowing the researcher to weave together memories of the crisis with follow-up accounts years later, capturing the lingering shadows of unfinished learning, teacher burnout, and cultural contestation over technology.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis study therefore takes up autoethnography not simply as a method, but as a stance: a recognition that my own life—as a student in Egypt, a teacher in Saudi Arabia and the UK, and now a researcher—cannot be separated from the data I analyse. By drawing on my memories alongside interviews, field notes, and follow-up conversations through 2025, I aim to contribute a form of analysis that is not only empirical but experiential, situating education’s long shadow of COVID-19 within both cultural structures and lived stories.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"3. Methodology","content":"\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e3.1 Research Design: Autoethnography\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThis study adopts an autoethnographic\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u0026nbsp;approach\u003c/strong\u003e, which combines personal narrative with cultural analysis. Autoethnography is particularly suited to contexts where the researcher is both participant and observer, weaving lived experience into the analysis of broader social phenomena (Ellis, Adams \u0026amp; Bochner, 2011; Adams, Holman Jones \u0026amp; Ellis, 2015). In the case of COVID-19, where all actors were simultaneously living the crisis, autoethnography enables a layered account: one that recognises the researcher’s history as a student in Egypt, teacher in Saudi Arabia and the UK, and now as a doctoral researcher.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than treating subjectivity as a limitation, autoethnography positions it as a resource, connecting micro-level experiences with macro-level structures (Chang, 2008). This stance is central to the present study, which seeks to understand not only the immediate effects of school closures but their long-term cultural implications. In particular, it allows the research to trace how experiences of inequality, resilience, and cultural negotiation with digital tools unfold differently in Egypt and the UK.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo ensure credibility, the autoethnographic narrative is triangulated with teacher interviews, follow-up conversations, and field notes. Reflexive journaling was maintained throughout, making the researcher’s interpretive lens visible and transparent. This dual emphasis on lived experience and systematic analysis aligns with Anderson’s (2006) call for analytic autoethnography, which balances evocative narrative with cultural interpretation.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e3.2 Data Collection\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eData were gathered across three distinct phases of the pandemic and its aftermath:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCrisis Phase (2020–2021):\u003c/strong\u003e\n \u003col\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e22 semi-structured interviews\u003c/strong\u003e with teachers (12 Egypt, 10 UK) conducted via Zoom and WhatsApp.\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eField notes\u003c/strong\u003e recorded during and immediately after interviews to capture tone, silences, interruptions, and contextual details.\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDocumentary evidence\u003c/strong\u003e, including school-issued online learning guidelines and shared lesson plans.\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003c/ol\u003e\n \u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReopening Phase (2022):\u003c/strong\u003e\n \u003col\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFollow-up interviews\u003c/strong\u003e with a subset of teachers to explore how schools handled reopening, remediation of unfinished curricula, and cultural shifts in technology use.\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSchool visits and classroom observations\u003c/strong\u003e (where access was possible) with accompanying\u0026nbsp;\u003cstrong\u003evisual field notes and photographs\u003c/strong\u003e documenting material practices (e.g., chalkboards vs. laptops).\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003c/ol\u003e\n \u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLong Shadow Phase (2023–2025):\u003c/strong\u003e\n \u003col\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e11 longitudinal interviews\u003c/strong\u003e (6 Egypt, 5 UK) focusing on sustained impacts of COVID-19 closures on teaching, digital adoption, and professional identity.\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCollection of visual evidence\u003c/strong\u003e of classroom practices and teacher-student interactions.\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eContinued autoethnographic journaling\u003c/strong\u003e of the researcher’s dual role as both participant (teacher/researcher) and observer.\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003c/ol\u003e\n \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAcross all phases, interviews followed a flexible guide that allowed participants to shape the conversation around their own experiences. This aligns with Brinkmann and Kvale’s (2015) argument that semi-structured interviews create space for meaning-making, rather than imposing rigid categories.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e3.2 Researcher Reflections as Data\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn line with the principles of autoethnography, the researcher’s own\u0026nbsp;\u003cstrong\u003ememories, reflections, and embodied experiences were treated as core data\u003c/strong\u003e. As Ellis, Adams, and Bochner (2011) note, autoethnography legitimises personal narrative as a way of connecting the self to culture.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eReflexive practices included:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eMemory writing\u003c/strong\u003e about schooling in Egypt, especially reliance on private tutoring, which later echoed in teachers’ narratives.\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTeaching reflections\u003c/strong\u003e from Saudi Arabia and the UK, capturing frustrations with styluses, tablets, and digital platforms.\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReflexive journaling\u003c/strong\u003e throughout the project, documenting emotional responses to interviews (e.g., recognition, dissonance, discomfort).\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEmbodied and sensory notes\u003c/strong\u003e during school visits, including photographs and sketches of learning environments.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese reflections were analysed not in isolation, but alongside interviews and field notes, forming what Anderson (2006) calls \u003cem\u003eanalytic autoethnography\u003c/em\u003e: a dialogic method where the researcher’s self becomes a lens to illuminate cultural patterns.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e3. 3Data Analysis\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnalysis followed a\u0026nbsp;\u003cstrong\u003ethematic approach\u003c/strong\u003e (Braun \u0026amp; Clarke, 2006), combined with an autoethnographic layering of personal narrative and participant accounts. The process included:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTranscription and initial coding\u003c/strong\u003e of all interviews, identifying recurring categories such as “unfinished curricula,” “digital barriers,” “parental restrictions,” and “teacher exhaustion.”\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIterative comparison\u003c/strong\u003e between Egyptian and UK datasets, noting both convergences (e.g., exhaustion, inequality) and divergences (e.g., moralisation of technology in Egypt vs. pragmatic adoption in the UK).\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIntegration of reflexive data\u003c/strong\u003e (personal memories, journals, field notes) to deepen cultural interpretation and highlight insider/outsider positionality.\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTemporal analysis\u003c/strong\u003e across the three phases (2020–2025) to trace continuity and transformation in teaching, learning, and cultural practices.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis approach ensured that the findings were both\u0026nbsp;\u003cstrong\u003eempirically grounded\u003c/strong\u003e in teacher narratives and\u0026nbsp;\u003cstrong\u003eexperientially enriched\u003c/strong\u003e by the researcher’s own lived story.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e3.4 Ethical Considerations\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis study adhered to established ethical standards for qualitative research (BERA, 2018; Creswell \u0026amp; Poth, 2018). Participants were provided with detailed information sheets and gave informed consent prior to interviews. All interviews were conducted voluntarily, with the right to withdraw at any stage.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eConfidentiality was ensured by the use of pseudonyms, anonymisation of school names, and secure digital storage of transcripts and field notes. Special care was taken with visual evidence (photographs, classroom sketches), ensuring that no identifying features of students or schools were retained.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGiven the autoethnographic nature of the study, reflexivity was also treated as an ethical practice. The researcher maintained a reflexive journal not only as an analytic tool but also to monitor power dynamics in interviews and to remain attentive to moments of resonance or discomfort. This follows Ellis (2007), who emphasises relational ethics—considering how research relationships continue to affect participants and researcher beyond the interview itself.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEthical approval was obtained through the host university’s research ethics committee.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn conclusion, This chapter has outlined the methodological approach underpinning the study. Autoethnography was adopted to connect personal experience with broader cultural narratives, situating the researcher’s life history within the analysis of pandemic schooling. The chapter described the participant sample, phases of data collection (2020–2025), and the central role of researcher reflections as a form of data. It also detailed the thematic and comparative strategies of analysis, which combined interview transcripts, field notes, visual evidence, and autoethnographic journaling.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBy positioning teacher narratives alongside the researcher’s own memories, the methodology seeks to produce what Geertz (1973) calls \u003cem\u003ethick description\u003c/em\u003e—accounts that are both personal and cultural, descriptive and interpretive. The ethical stance taken emphasised consent, confidentiality, and reflexivity as integral to the research process.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe following chapter presents the\u0026nbsp;\u003cstrong\u003eData Analysis and Findings\u003c/strong\u003e, organised around six themes: (1) school closures and their global shadow, (2) digital divides, (3) religion, culture, and e-tools, (4) teachers’ resilience and emotional labour, (5) post-COVID transformations, and (6) shifting cultural meanings of education.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"4. Data Analysis and Discussion","content":"\u003cp\u003eThis chapter presents six themes that emerged from the study, integrating teacher voices with my own reflections, and connecting them to the wider literature. In doing so, it demonstrates how the pandemic reshaped educational practices and cultural meanings in Egypt and the UK, not only during closures but into the years that followed.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTheme 1. School Closures and Their Global Shadow\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“We did not finish a single term. Parents went straight back to tutoring, like school was just a formality.”\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003e(Egyptian teacher, Village school, 2021)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn Egypt, closures reinforced what teachers called “unfinished schooling.” Classes were disrupted mid-term, exams cancelled or condensed, and parents turned immediately to tutoring. For many, this was not a new response but an intensification of a pattern that had long existed: formal school provided certificates, but private tutoring delivered learning (Sobhy, 2012). Teachers across Cairo and rural governorates reported the same phenomenon: closures deepened a reliance on shadow education.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eI recognised this in my own rural schooling. In our village classroom, lessons often ended abruptly—sometimes because the teacher had to leave for private work, sometimes because the electricity cut out and the day was dismissed early. I can still picture the cracked wooden benches, the chalk dust hanging in the air, and the silence after the teacher walked out. I remember carrying home half-completed exercise books, my parents telling me to wait for the tutor to “explain it properly.” What teachers described during COVID echoed the survival strategies of my own childhood: the tutor as the real teacher, the classroom as ceremony.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the UK, the shadow of closures looked different.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“They logged on, but many didn’t show up. Sometimes I could see their names, but the cameras were off. It was like teaching into a void.”\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003e(UK teacher, Birmingham, 2020)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTeachers repeatedly described students who were “present but absent.” Pupils logged into Teams or Zoom but did not engage. Some muted microphones and typed “done” into the chat; others logged in and disappeared. This reflects what Engzell, Frey, and Verhagen (2021) call “hidden inequality,” where formal attendance masked substantive absence.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFollow-up interviews in 2023 confirmed that the effects of this disengagement were long-lasting.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“When they came back, you could see the gaps. Year 7s who should have mastered writing were still struggling with a paragraph. It wasn’t just lost time—it followed them into the next years.”\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003e(UK teacher, London, 2023)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eTheir silence was not new to me; I had already lived it in another form. In my village classroom in Egypt, silence came when lessons ended without completion, leaving gaps for tutors to fill. As a teacher in England during the lockdown, silence came from the grey boxes of Teams, faces hidden, microphones muted. Sometimes I caught a parent’s whisper prompting an answer, but more often nothing. Teaching became a guessing game: who was listening, who was gone? In both contexts, silence carried inequality—unseen, but heavy.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Egyptian and UK experiences show different but parallel shadows. In Egypt, closures reinforced the structural reliance on tutoring, confirming the\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003ede facto\u003c/em\u003e privatisation of learning (Sobhy, 2012; Assaad \u0026amp; Krafft, 2022). In the UK, closures exposed fragility in digital engagement: students were technically connected but substantively absent (Andrew et al., 2020; Engzell et al., 2021). Globally, similar patterns have been documented, with UNESCO (2021) highlighting gendered exclusion in digital learning and the OECD (2022) warning that post-COVID inequalities risk becoming entrenched for a generation.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe autoethnographic reflections illustrate the cultural continuity of these shadows. As a rural student in Egypt, I lived the incompleteness of state schooling and the inevitability of tutoring. As a UK teacher during the pandemic, I lived the emptiness of digital silence. Both experiences mirror teachers’ accounts, showing that closures made inequality\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003evisible\u003c/em\u003e in different forms: through dependence on tutoring in Egypt, and through disengagement in the UK.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe “shadow” of COVID, therefore, is not only metaphorical but structural: it lingers in classrooms, tutoring centres, and digital platforms, shaping educational trajectories years after reopening.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTheme 2. Digital Divides – More Than Access\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“The internet was there, the laptop was there — but the father said,\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003e‘No, she cannot use it.’\u003c/em\u003e”\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003e(Egyptian teacher, Rural governorate, 2021)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor many teachers in Egypt, the challenge was not only devices or bandwidth but cultural permission. Families, particularly in rural areas, restricted daughters’ participation in online classes. Concerns about propriety, distraction, and morality meant that even when infrastructure was available, it was not always accessible.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis reminded me of my own school days in the village. We had no computer lab, no internet in classrooms, and at home the family television sat like a shrine in the corner, turned on only at agreed times. Later, when I was old enough to use a laptop, my parents allowed it only under supervision, warning me of “bad habits.” The device was there, but access was rationed. Hearing teachers describe fathers refusing daughters’ online participation during COVID, I recognised the same anxieties. Access was never only about wires and screens—it was about trust, morality, and control.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the UK, teachers described a different kind of divide.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“They had the laptop — the school gave it to them — but when I rang, I could hear the PlayStation in the background.”\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003e(UK teacher, London, 2021)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHere the problem was not lack of devices but competing demands for attention. Schools distributed laptops and Wi-Fi dongles, yet online lessons had to compete with gaming consoles, siblings, and household distractions.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBy 2025, the divide had not disappeared but shifted:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“The laptops we gave out in 2020 are now breaking down, and the funding for replacements has gone. Some kids are back to sharing a phone between them.”\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003e(UK teacher, Birmingham, 2025)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eI too encountered this divide as a teacher. I remember watching students freeze mid-lesson: “bad connection,” they said, but their eyes flickered with the light of another tab. Sometimes YouTube, sometimes Fortnite. In Egypt, my family policed my internet use, limiting distraction through prohibition. In the UK, students policed nothing, distractions multiplying inside the very tool designed for learning. In both cases, the device was present, but learning was precarious.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe accounts show that the digital divide is more than a technical issue of access. In Egypt, it was shaped by cultural anxieties, gendered restrictions, and moral concerns (Herrera, 2006; Khalifa, 2023). In the UK, it was less about access than engagement: laptops could be provided, but meaningful participation could not be guaranteed (Andrew et al., 2020).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eScholars have long argued that technology is never neutral. Selwyn (2016) highlights how digital use is always culturally mediated, while Warschauer (2004) reframes the divide as a matter of social inclusion as much as infrastructure. Global reports echo this. The World Bank (2021) noted “second-generation digital divides,” where access exists but effective use is unequal; UNICEF (2020) warned that even when devices are distributed, “home environments and parental mediation” shape outcomes.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAutoethnographically, my memories bridge these stories: the rationed television and supervised laptop of my Egyptian home, the distracted screens of my UK classroom. Both reveal that inequality lives not only outside the screen, in infrastructure, but inside it, in attention, trust, and culture.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTheme 3. Religion, Culture, and E-Tools\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“For him, it was not suitable — his daughter should never be on camera.”\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003e(Egyptian teacher, village school, 2022)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn Egypt, technology was not only a logistical or technical issue; it was framed through moral and religious concerns. Teachers described families — particularly in conservative or rural contexts — who resisted e-learning for daughters, fearing exposure to inappropriate content or socialisation. Even when schools reopened in 2022, roughly one in five families opposed digital education on cultural or religious grounds, preferring face-to-face or tutoring alternatives.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eI was not surprised by this. Growing up in my village home, I learned early that the internet was not simply a tool but a moral terrain. My parents monitored my use strictly, warning me against “immoral” websites and friendships. Sometimes I was told not to sit alone with the computer; a male cousin was asked to join me in the room. These rules were not only about distraction but about honour, propriety, and the fear of what might happen if the screen became a window into another world. Listening to Egyptian teachers describe fathers refusing cameras for daughters, I recognised the same script I had lived: technology as temptation, the screen as risk.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBy contrast, teachers in UK Islamic schools reported few such restrictions.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“We used Teams without any issues. Even in Islamic schools, there was no religious problem — the challenge was just making them turn cameras on.”\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003e(UK teacher, Manchester, 2021)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHere, religion did not prevent digital adoption. Islamic schools pragmatically embraced Microsoft Teams and Zoom, framing challenges as logistical (old devices, weak Wi-Fi) or motivational (students not switching cameras on). Moral discourses around gender and propriety rarely surfaced.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis contrast struck me deeply. In the Egyptian village, as a teenager, I lived with digital bans framed as religious protection. In Manchester, I walked into an Islamic school that had adopted Teams as standard practice. The same religion produced different practices. I found myself surprised: the very camera that was forbidden in my Egyptian home was ordinary in a UK Islamic classroom. It was a reminder that technology is never simply about religion — it is about how religion interacts with culture, politics, and place.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Egyptian and UK cases reveal how cultural and religious discourses shape the adoption of e-tools differently. In Egypt, families often moralised digital tools, linking cameras, internet use, and online interaction to broader anxieties about gender and propriety. This echoes Herrera’s (2006) argument that educational change in the Middle East is inseparable from moral discourses and gender norms. Recent studies confirm that post-COVID digital adoption in Egypt remains filtered through these concerns, with many parents continuing to see online education as potentially unsafe for girls (Khalifa, 2023).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the UK, even in faith-based schools, adoption was pragmatic. Challenges were not moral but practical — devices breaking, budgets shrinking, students hiding behind black screens. This reflects research showing that digital tools in Western Islamic schools are framed as pedagogical resources rather than moral threats (Shah, 2012).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eScholars remind us that technology is always culturally embedded. Warschauer (2004) insists that access is not just technical but social, and Selwyn (2016) highlights how tools acquire meaning through context. The Egyptian/UK comparison demonstrates this vividly: the same e-tool — a camera on Microsoft Teams — was interpreted as a moral hazard in one setting and a mundane classroom requirement in another.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAutoethnographically, I bridge these contrasts. My own childhood experience of restricted internet use mirrors Egyptian teachers’ accounts of moral anxieties. My later surprise at seeing Islamic schools in the UK adopt Teams without hesitation illustrates how culture, not religion alone, shapes digital practice. The same faith, two contexts, two meanings. COVID-19 did not erase these differences; it illuminated them.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTheme 4. Teachers, Resilience, and Emotional Labour\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“We had no contact with students at all. It was like teaching into emptiness.”\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003e(Egyptian teacher, Village school, 2020)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn Egypt’s village schools, teachers described the lockdown as a rupture. With little infrastructure, minimal training, and few resources, many felt paralysed. Internet connections were weak or non-existent, and communication with students was rare. For some, teaching stopped altogether.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Every evening I called parents. Sometimes I was more exhausted than the students.”\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003e(UK teacher, Manchester Muslim school, 2021)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn contrast, teachers in the Manchester Islamic school were connected, but overstretched. They used Teams pragmatically, but this required long hours of follow-up. Teachers described phoning parents to chase homework, troubleshooting IT with families, and managing pastoral needs alongside academic lessons.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eI found echoes of myself in both accounts. As a child in a village classroom in Egypt, I had already seen how fragile teaching could be: lessons abandoned when teachers left early or resources ran out. The silence of those days echoed in the Egyptian teacher’s words during COVID. Later, as a teacher in the UK, I too felt the exhaustion of blurred boundaries. In a Muslim school in Manchester, I juggled Teams lessons, parental WhatsApp messages, and my own anxieties. I sometimes felt I was carrying more than my students — their fears, their frustrations, and their families’ expectations.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe differences between resignation in Egypt and exhaustion in the UK reveal the varied weight of emotional labour. In Egypt’s rural schools, teachers described a loss of agency: a sense of being unable to reach their students at all. In the UK Muslim school, teachers had agency but at a personal cost, working far beyond the school day.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTeachers’ narratives confirm the literature on the intensification of emotional labour during COVID. MacIntyre, Gregersen, and Mercer (2020) describe how teachers were asked to remain resilient while adapting to unfamiliar digital demands. Kim and Asbury (2020) show how role expansion blurred the line between professional and personal life. In the village schools of Egypt, this expansion was blocked by structural absence — no training, no connectivity — leaving teachers powerless. In the UK Islamic school, expansion was unrestrained — constant communication, constant responsibility — leaving teachers exhausted.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKelchtermans (2009) argues that teacher identity is inherently vulnerable, always negotiated between expectations and capacity. Day and Gu (2010) caution against romanticising resilience, reminding us that resilience often disguises systemic shortcomings. Post-pandemic research supports this view: Allen et al. (2022) found high levels of burnout among teachers in England, while UNESCO (2021) reported attrition among teachers in rural and low-resource settings.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAutoethnographically, I bridge these stories. I remember the silence of my village classroom in Egypt, where education often stopped abruptly. And I remember the exhaustion of Manchester, where I taught into the night across screens and phone calls. Resilience was demanded in both places — but in Egypt, it meant accepting absence; in the UK, it meant surviving excess. Both came at a cost rarely acknowledged in policy or research.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTheme 5. Post-COVID Transformations (2022–2025)\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Even now, parents prefer tutoring. It’s stronger than before. School is just for exams.”\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003e(Egyptian teacher, Village school, 2024)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTeachers in the Egyptian village school described how the pandemic had not ended when schools reopened. Instead, tutoring became even more central. Parents who once treated tutoring as a supplement now viewed it as the core of their children’s learning. Families saved to pay tutors first, treating school attendance as little more than a ticket to exams. In this way, the pandemic accelerated a shift that had been unfolding for decades — the marginalisation of formal schooling in favour of shadow education (Sobhy, 2012; Assaad \u0026amp; Krafft, 2022).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFor me, this was déjà vu. As a child in my own village classroom, I had already learned that “real education” often happened elsewhere. The official school day ended early, teachers left, and we carried unfinished lessons home. It was in the cramped tutoring rooms — crowded with students, the air thick with dust and chatter — where understanding finally came. When I listened to teachers in 2024 describing how parents now relied on tutors more than ever, I felt as if my own childhood classroom had simply stretched forward into the present. COVID had not changed the culture of learning in the village — it had confirmed it.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the UK Muslim school, teachers also reported that the effects of the pandemic lingered.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“We still see the gaps. Year 7s who missed their early writing are struggling even now. It followed them through.”\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003e(UK teacher, Manchester, 2023)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLearning gaps did not disappear with reopening. Teachers spoke of “lost cohorts,” children who had missed foundational literacy and numeracy and carried those absences into later years. Despite catch-up programmes, the gaps remained most pronounced among disadvantaged families.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBy 2025, new challenges had emerged.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“The devices we handed out in 2020 are now old. Funding is gone. We are back to chasing students who share a phone between siblings.”\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003e(UK teacher, Manchester, 2025)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDigital inequality resurfaced, but in a new form: not the absence of devices, but the decline of ageing equipment and shrinking budgets.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAs a teacher in Manchester, I saw these shadows every day. Students who had fallen behind in 2020 still hesitated with writing in 2023, their confidence fragile, their sentences stuttering across the page. Parents messaged me late at night on WhatsApp: “Can you check his work? He’s worried.” Sometimes I answered at midnight, my phone glowing in the dark, as tired as they were. Politicians spoke of “recovery,” but in our classrooms it felt uneven, patchy, unfinished. COVID had ended as a virus, but not as an educational reality.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Egyptian and UK cases show that the effects of COVID extended well beyond the crisis years. In Egypt’s village school, tutoring became further entrenched, confirming the deep privatisation of learning (Sobhy, 2012; Assaad \u0026amp; Krafft, 2022). In the Manchester Muslim school, learning loss persisted, echoing Engzell, Frey, and Verhagen’s (2021) finding that early gaps widened into long-term inequalities.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGlobal evidence reinforces these patterns. The World Bank (2022) warned of escalating “learning poverty,” where children who missed early foundations risk never catching up. OECD (2022) described the pandemic as a “long shadow,” affecting students’ transitions into secondary school. UNESCO (2023) noted that recovery has been “deeply uneven,” with rural schools and disadvantaged communities still struggling. UNICEF (2021) highlighted how the most marginalised children — rural, poor, or female — were least likely to return to stable learning pathways.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAutoethnographically, my memories bridge these findings. As a student in a rural Egyptian school, I lived in a system where tutoring was the real classroom and schools were ceremonial. As a teacher in Manchester, I witnessed students carrying learning loss forward year after year, their gaps becoming scars. COVID was not a rupture but an accelerant: it deepened Egypt’s reliance on tutoring and prolonged the UK’s digital and educational inequalities. Its traces remain visible — in tutoring centres, in battered laptops, in unfinished exercise books, and in the tired eyes of students still catching up.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTheme 6. Shifting Cultural Meanings of Education\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Parents told me:\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003e‘School is only for the certificate — the real learning is with the tutor.’\u003c/em\u003e”\u003cbr\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003e(Egyptian teacher, Village school, 2023)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTeachers in the Egyptian village school explained how the pandemic did not only disrupt education but reshaped how families valued it. Many parents openly described formal schooling as a bureaucratic necessity, while tutoring carried the cultural meaning of “real” education. For some families, digital tools were dismissed as morally risky or pedagogically weak, reinforcing older hierarchies between classroom, home, and tutoring.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis was not strange to me. As a child in a village classroom, I often heard the same message: “Attend school, but learn from the tutor.” I remember my parents calculating tutoring fees before buying new clothes, prioritising education through private means rather than public provision. COVID did not invent this mindset — it amplified it, bringing what was once whispered into the open. In the village, the cultural script of education shifted from subtle reliance on tutoring to an almost open rejection of school as anything beyond an exam centre.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the Manchester Muslim school, cultural meanings shifted in different ways.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Parents began to see us more as partners. They were on Teams, on WhatsApp, checking everything. For some, school moved into the home.”\u003cbr\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003e(UK teacher, Manchester, 2022)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTeachers described how digital tools blurred boundaries between school and family life. Parents, often mothers, became co-educators, monitoring lessons, submitting homework, and directly messaging teachers. Some welcomed this partnership, while others felt it was intrusive. The school, once a distinct space, was redefined as something that could enter the living room.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eI experienced this firsthand. During lockdown, my phone buzzed constantly with WhatsApp messages from parents: questions, complaints, requests for reassurance. In one sense, it made the school more transparent; in another, it dissolved the boundaries that once protected teachers’ private lives. Education became a shared, and sometimes contested, cultural space between teachers, parents, and screens.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe difference between the Egyptian and UK cases lies in how the cultural meanings were renegotiated. In Egypt, COVID intensified the idea that\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003eformal schooling is hollow\u003c/em\u003e, with tutoring elevated as the trusted site of learning. In Manchester, COVID reframed schooling as\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003epermeable\u003c/em\u003e, moving into family spaces and reshaping the parent–teacher relationship.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEducation is never only technical — it is cultural, bound up with trust, identity, and meaning. In Egypt’s village school, the pandemic confirmed a cultural hierarchy that places tutoring above schooling, reflecting long-standing structural inequalities (Sobhy, 2012; Assaad \u0026amp; Krafft, 2022). In Manchester’s Muslim school, the pandemic fostered a new cultural negotiation: parents became more visible in the daily work of schooling, echoing Vincent’s (2017) research on parental involvement and digital mediation.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGlobally, studies confirm that the pandemic reshaped cultural meanings of education. UNESCO (2021) documented how many communities in low-resource settings came to distrust formal schooling and re-invest in community or private alternatives. OECD (2022) reported that parental involvement rose sharply across Europe, creating new tensions between home and school. UNICEF (2021) highlighted that for many families, particularly in conservative or religious contexts, digital learning was not a neutral tool but a cultural challenge.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAutoethnographically, I see these cultural shifts as continuities with my own life. In my Egyptian village, I lived the downgrading of formal schooling and the elevation of tutoring. As a teacher in Manchester, I lived the blurring of school and home, as parents monitored lessons through WhatsApp and Teams. In both contexts, COVID redefined what “school” meant: in Egypt, a certificate-giving shell; in Manchester, a porous institution spilling into family life. These cultural meanings are as lasting as the learning gaps themselves, shaping how education is lived and valued long after the pandemic.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn conclusion, \u0026nbsp;this section has traced six interwoven themes across Egyptian village schools and a Manchester Muslim school: the unfinished schooling of closures, the cultural depth of digital divides, the moralisation and normalisation of e-tools, the emotional labour of teachers, the lingering post-COVID transformations, and the shifting cultural meanings of education. Together, these accounts reveal that COVID-19 was not only a temporary disruption but a catalyst that magnified existing inequalities, reshaped practices, and redefined how education is lived. The chapter shows that these effects endure into the present, carrying a long shadow that continues to shape classrooms, families, and teachers’ identities.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"5. Conclusion","content":"\u003cp\u003eThis study has examined the long-term implications of COVID-19 on teaching, learning, and culture through the cases of an Egyptian village school and a Manchester Muslim school. Using autoethnography, I combined teacher interviews, field notes, and my own lived experiences as both student and teacher to reveal how education was disrupted, reshaped, and culturally redefined.\u003c/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eKey Findings\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eClosures amplified existing inequalities\u003c/strong\u003e: In Egypt, unfinished schooling reinforced reliance on tutoring as the “real” classroom; in the UK, digital silence exposed disengagement and hidden inequality.\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDigital divides were cultural as well as technical\u003c/strong\u003e: In Egypt, access was filtered through gendered and moral restrictions; in the UK, devices existed but were undermined by distraction and ageing infrastructure.\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReligion and culture shaped e-tool use differently\u003c/strong\u003e: Egyptian families often moralised digital learning, especially for girls, while UK Islamic schools pragmatically normalised Teams and Zoom.\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTeachers carried emotional labour\u003c/strong\u003e: In Egypt, teachers described resignation under structural neglect; in Manchester, exhaustion from constant communication and blurred boundaries.\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePost-COVID transformations persisted\u003c/strong\u003e: Tutoring deepened in Egypt, while in the UK, “lost cohorts” and broken devices signalled inequalities that never disappeared.\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCultural meanings of education shifted\u003c/strong\u003e: In Egypt, school was reduced to certification while tutoring embodied learning; in Manchester, digital tools blurred school-home boundaries, making parents co-educators.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eResearch Gaps \u0026amp; Recommendations\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLongitudinal data in rural contexts\u003c/strong\u003e: More sustained follow-up studies are needed in rural schools in the Global South, where post-COVID transformations may diverge sharply from urban narratives.\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFaith-based schooling\u003c/strong\u003e: Comparative research on Muslim schools across different countries could illuminate how religion and culture mediate technology adoption beyond simplistic East/West binaries.\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTeacher wellbeing\u003c/strong\u003e: Policy must move beyond the language of “resilience” and address systemic factors that exhaust or marginalise teachers, particularly in low-resource contexts.\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eParental roles in digital education\u003c/strong\u003e: Future studies should examine how home-school boundaries have been permanently altered by WhatsApp, Teams, and other tools, and what this means for privacy, trust, and equity.\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePolicy interventions\u003c/strong\u003e: Both Egypt and the UK need sustained investment in infrastructure (devices, connectivity) and teacher training, but also cultural engagement — addressing moral anxieties in Egypt and motivational challenges in the UK.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt the end, I believe COVID-19 was not a temporary rupture but an accelerant. It magnified inequalities, accelerated cultural shifts, and redrew the boundaries between school, family, and technology. Its shadow lingers not only in test scores or devices but in lived memories — the unfinished exercise books of an Egyptian village child, the grey Teams screens of a Manchester teacher, the tired eyes of students still catching up. To understand education after COVID, we must look beyond recovery statistics and attend to these lived realities, where culture, memory, and inequality continue to shape what schooling means.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Declarations","content":"\u003ch2\u003eEthical Approval\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis study was conducted in accordance with the ethical standards of the University of Greater Manchester\u0026rsquo;s Research Ethics Committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments. Ethical approval was granted by the University of Greater Manchester Research Ethics Committee in \u003cstrong\u003eFebruary 2022\u003c/strong\u003e. Additional approval was obtained from the research departments of the two participating schools: the Muslim school in Manchester, UK, in \u003cstrong\u003eMarch 2022\u003c/strong\u003e, and the village school in Egypt in \u003cstrong\u003eJune 2022\u003c/strong\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eInformed Consent\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll participants were provided with detailed information sheets outlining the study\u0026rsquo;s purpose, scope, and methods before data collection. Written informed consent was obtained prior to participation in interviews and follow-up conversations. Participants were informed of their right to withdraw at any stage without consequence, and of the measures taken to ensure anonymity and confidentiality. Informed consent was collected between\u0026nbsp;\u003cstrong\u003eJuly 2022 and May 2025\u003c/strong\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eAuthor Contribution\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eM.H. (Mahmoud Harb) conceived and designed the study, conducted data collection (teacher interviews, follow-up conversations, and autoethnographic reflections), carried out the data analysis, and wrote the manuscript. M.H. approved the final version of the manuscript and is accountable for all aspects of the work.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eData Availability\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe qualitative data that underpin this study (interview transcripts, follow-up conversations, field notes, and reflexive journals) are not publicly available due to confidentiality agreements with participants. Anonymised excerpts that support the findings of this research are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"References","content":"\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAdams TE, Jones H, S., Ellis C (2015) Autoethnography. Oxford University Press\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAllen R, Jerrim J, Sims S (2022) How did the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic affect teacher wellbeing? Oxf Rev Educ 48(1):1\u0026ndash;17\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAllen R, Jerrim J, Sims S (2022) The impact of COVID-19 on teachers: A review of evidence. 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World Bank\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003e"}],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":true,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":false,"hideJournal":true,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":false,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":false,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true},"keywords":"COVID-19 and Education, School Closures, Shadow Education, Digital Divide, Religion and Education, Teacher Resilience, Emotional Labour, Autoethnography, Egypt, UK Muslim Schools, Post-COVID Transformations, Cultural Meanings of Schooling","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7510051/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7510051/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"\u003cp\u003eThis study examines the long-term implications of COVID-19 school closures in two contrasting contexts: an Egyptian village school and a Muslim school in Manchester, UK. Using autoethnography, it weaves together teacher interviews, follow-up conversations, and the researcher’s own memories as both student and teacher. Six themes emerged: unfinished schooling and reliance on tutoring; cultural as well as technical digital divides; religion shaping the use of e-tools; the emotional labour of teachers; post-COVID continuities; and shifting cultural meanings of education.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFindings show that COVID-19 acted not as a rupture but as an accelerant, magnifying inequalities and redrawing boundaries between school, family, and technology. In Egypt, closures entrenched shadow education; in Manchester, digital engagement blurred home–school boundaries and exposed hidden inequalities. The study highlights the need for policies that move beyond access and infrastructure to address the cultural, moral, and emotional dimensions of post-COVID education.\u003c/p\u003e","manuscriptTitle":"Beyond the Closure: Autoethnographic Insights into the Lasting Impacts of COVID-19 on Education in Egypt and the UK","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2025-10-16 20:48:17","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7510051/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"b0a3a749-8945-4305-8a79-57d647881776","owner":[],"postedDate":"October 16th, 2025","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"posted","subjectAreas":[{"id":56435087,"name":"Humanities/Cultural and media studies"},{"id":56435088,"name":"Social science/Cultural and media studies"},{"id":56435089,"name":"Social science/Education"},{"id":56435090,"name":"Humanities/Literature"},{"id":56435091,"name":"Humanities/Religion"}],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2026-04-14T17:10:26+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2025-10-16 20:48:17","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-7510051","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-7510051","identity":"rs-7510051","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"8U1c8b4HqxoKbykW_rLl7","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}