Acknowledging emotive response and epistemic positionality: Disruptive transformative pedagogy amidst a global pandemic

In the dynamic and iteratively changing landscape of global Higher Education, processes of learning, teaching and professional practice have been irrevocably impacted upon by the COVID-19 virus. This brief paper explores how the concept of emotive response generally and emotional labour specifically, have impacted on the context of Higher Education Institutions globally and the implications of this in practice based educational settings. Wider civic society will bear the burden of this pandemic via processes of economic restraint for a generation, yet transformative perspectives have great significance to both how people’s capacity to reflect and make meaning of current times will continue to drive a proactive and reflexive response to the challenges and opportunities it provides. Mezirow’s, now seminal, Transformative Learning Theory (2000), and the Hayes and Corrie (2020) Disruptive Pedagogical Approach to facilitating learning provide the baseline theoretical frameworks for this conceptual discussion.