Abstract
Career technical education is an essential element for the workforce development needs of employers in the United States of America. The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-2021 has created challenges for higher education and has affected the lives of faculty and students in different ways. The purpose of this qualitative hermeneutic phenomenology study was to explore faculty experiences with the migration of career technical educational curriculum to an online format, in a compressed time, during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-2021. The study was conducted with career technical educators in community colleges within the United States. The study aimed to share the lived experiences of career technical faculty to enable career technical educators to provide quality education to students while ensuring a steady flow of graduates to enter the workforce and meet workforce needs. Participants were chosen based on having been a career technical faculty member at a community college, having completed two terms of continuous teaching, being able to demonstrate that more than 70% of their assigned classes over the past two academic years or face-to-face courses, and having taught during Spring term 2020 during a combination of months between January and June 2020. The study used in-depth interviews with participants. Thematic analysis of the data yielded four areas of focus, indicating the participants’ lived experiences. The first theme represents emotional health, the second theme represents social health, the third theme represents care, and the final theme represents personal and professional growth.
Keywords: career technical education, higher education, COVID-19 pandemic