Taking ‘school’ home in the COVID-19 era: A Foucauldian analysis of the pivot to remote teaching and learning (original) (raw)
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The health emergency generated by COVID-19 and the massive closure of schools has given rise to an unprecedented situation for education systems worldwide. This situation has raised fundamental questions about the role of the school in contemporary societies and whether it still fulfils a particular function as a social institution. This article forwards a theoretical discussion on these issues from a critical sociological approach and, especially, from the perspective of social justice. It argues that the two main functions of schools, namely, socialisation and selection, cannot be fully achieved by distance schooling. Moreover, it contends that the lockdown of schools reinforced the crisis of meaning within the school system by hindering its ability to ensure learning for all students. Overall, the article presents a reflection on the meaning of the school institution in the 21 st century, representing a key contribution to contemporary debates on the sociology of education.
Journal of Educational Administration and History, 54:4, 397-419., 2022
As from the first quarter of 2020, the spotlight in global news has shone brightly on the Covid-19 pandemic story. One of the major shifts occurred in education as efforts to stem the spread of the virus prompted school closures. Schools gradually shifted to online teaching, and parents were thus forced to combine their regular jobs with supporting the education of their children. Through the collection of qualitative data from focus groups held with various stakeholders, this paper seeks to explore the emerging home-schooling scenario in Malta and the unplanned for and unprecedented adaptation to an online education environment, in order to examine the novel challenges and tensions that emerged between family, school and work. Despite being conducted in a relatively small nation state, this study offers the possibility of opening a dialogue within the global context with ramifications of a new paradigm shift in education, re-shaped by the novel coronavirus.
Frontiers in Education
According to Norway’s Educational Act (§2-1), all children and youths from age 6 to 16 have a right and an obligation to attend free and inclusive education, and most of them attend public schools. Attending school is important for students’ social and academic development and learning; however, some children do not attend school caused by a myriad of possible reasons. Interventions for students with school attendance problems (SAPs) must be individually adopted for each student based on a careful assessment of the difficulties and strengths of individuals and in the student’s environment. Homeschooling might be one intervention for students with SAPs; however, researchers and stakeholders do not agree that this is an optimal intervention. Schools that were closed from the middle of March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to investigate remote education more closely. An explorative study was conducted that analyzed 248 teachers’ in-depth perspectives on how t...
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This article is part of the disputes to hegemonize a particular sense of the democratic public school in times of coronavirus, in which distance education becomes a mandatory alternative to educational policy. Conversing with post-structuralist theoretical contributions, the paper aims to analyze the processes of signifying terms such as universal access, democracy, school knowledge and learning such as mobilized in 2020 in the Pedagogical Action Plan of the State Secretariat of Education of Rio de Janeiro. This analysis offers empirical evidence for an understanding of the effects of the intensification, in the current pandemic context, of the discursive articulation of neoliberal interests which put the school under threat. By developing such an argument, we seek to explore, beyond the language of denunciation, possibilities to reinvent a possible school of afterwards.
Education and the Pandemic: Distance Learning and the School-Family Relationship
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In this paper we present the preliminary results of a survey administered to Italian stu- dents, teachers and families to detect the conditions prevailing in the education sector in the time of Covid-19. The aims of the study were to analyze teachers’ new citizenship skills and families’ relationship skills in order to create a new school-family agreement that is suitable not only for face-to-face lessons but also for distance learning and that incorporates new participation compe- tences from all those involved. Responses to the questionnaires, created in semi-structured format, were received from 2,000 teachers, families and students from all over Italy. This explorative phase highlighted the profound distance-learning revolution that has been adopted by over 90% of edu- cation systems but that has also created enormous difficulties from the emotional and relational perspectives. Aspects such as personalization and individuality in the learning process have been deferred, especial...
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Revista Brasileira de Saúde Materno Infantil, 2021
Objectives: to characterize the teaching-learning process of children in early childhood taught by their parents and/or caregivers in remote educational mode, in different social contexts, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: a bibliographic study was carried out through a qualitative research in three VHL, Lilacs and Scielo databases. The descriptors Children, Pandemic, Caregivers, Distance education and Mental health were used. The sample was composed of 35 materials. Results: it was observed that countries presented problems in its educational system and that their situation also aggravated, such as in Brazil. Schools should try to mitigate the impact of the confinement, based on the recommendations that aim to consolidate what has been learned and interrupt the teaching of new content, eliminating the pressure on parents and guardians who assist students at this time. It is known that there is a lack of preparation of these caregivers, since the vast majority do not have mater...
Schooling Interrupted: Educating Children and Youth in the Covid-19 Era
CEPS Journal, 2021
• Distance education has been practised for generations, although its purpose and form have changed. Correspondence courses, in which students receive instruction via mail and respond with assignments or questions to the instructor, date back to the mid-1800s, if not earlier. As technology changed, so did the nature of distance education. Radio, television, computers, and, most recently, the internet have supported distance education over the years. Research studies on the use and effectiveness of distance education focus almost exclusively on higher education. A recent research synthesis suggests that fewer than five per cent of the studies have addressed K-12 education. The Covid-19 pandemic, however, has brought distance education into K-12 schools and classrooms. Distance education in the Covid-19 era has been referred to as 'emergency remote teaching' (ERT) because, with little research on which to rely, teachers must improvise quick solutions under less-than-ideal circumstances, a situation that causes many teachers to experience stress. The purpose of this paper is to address five fundamental questions. First, what problems have K-12 school administrators and teachers faced in implementing ERT? Second, under what conditions has ERT been effective since the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic? Third, what are the strengths of ERT in K-12 schools and classrooms? Fourth, what are the weaknesses of ERT in K-12 schools and classrooms? Fifth, to what extent will lessons learned from ERT influence teaching and learning when the pandemic abates? The paper concludes with a brief set of recommendations. Throughout the paper, the focus is on K-12 education.
Will Schooling Ever Change? School Culture, Distance Learning and the COVID-19 Pandemic
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This book is an insightful meta-narrative about schooling which explores the global natural experiment of the COVID-19 pandemic and its potential impact on school culture. The proposed book discusses how the abrupt and somewhat forced digital transformation of schooling on a global scale (caused by the COVID-19 pandemic) did not change the educational status quo. It states that online teaching and learning failed to transform the role of the key school actors, students and teachers as well as the relationship between them, despite megatrends such as digitalisation, automation and the development of artificial intelligence. This focus text discusses why the global experience of distance education did not translate into a significant qualitative change and provides a theoretical framework which enables the reader to interpret and explain the processes that occurred during distance education, as well as understand why extraordinarily little (if nothing) has changed in school culture. It will appeal to scholars and students from the sociology of education and from education studies, particularly those interested in school culture, innovation in education, online teaching and learning, curriculum studies and education policy.