The relationship between school and students in the COVID-19 pandemic
Research reveals the technological and pedagogical challenges imposed by the replacement of face to face classes by remote activities
NEWSROOM
June 22, 2021
The social isolation adopted to face covid-19 placed Brazilian education in an unprecedented situation, with the replacement of face to face classes by remote activities. Since the initial phase of the pandemic, in March 2020, 48 million Basic Education students have switched to home study, and 2.2 million teachers have suddenly been forced to teach online. The final effects of this measure will only be felt a few years from now. But research carried out throughout the pandemic is unanimous: the technological gaps of schools and students and the lack of preparation and training of teachers to deal with digital tools compromise learning, which will bring alarming consequences for the country, such as the increase in educational, economic and social inequality.
Digital Technology in Basic Education
Distance learning has advanced in Brazil, particularly for university students. In Basic Education, however, online interactions were limited, before the pandemic, to complementary activities of face to face classes and teacher-student and family communication, mainly in the private network. This situation changed with the social isolation implemented at the beginning of 2020, posing new challenges to education managers, teachers and students – how to maintain the quality of learning when students have a precarious information and communication technology infrastructure suitable for remote classes?
Difficulties in accessing digital tools and equipment in education have long been recognized, and they accompany the technological needs of the entire population in the country. The Continuous National Household Sample Survey that investigated access to information and communication technology in 2019 (Continuous Pnad TIC 2019) shows that the digital exclusion in the general population is directly related to the socioeconomic level of families, and is greater in less favored classes (see box below).
Internet access (Continuous Pnad TIC 2019)
- Only 40% of households in the country have a computer and 11% have a tablet. The income in households that have at least one of these equipments corresponds to almost three times the income of those who do not have any of them;
- More than 12 million households in the country do not have access to the internet, part of them due to the cost of equipment and services. The average per capita income of connected households is 1.5 minimum wages, double the income of those who do not access the network;
- About the equipment for internet access: cell phones are used in practically all households; the computer for just 45%; the tablet, for 12%. The average income of those who own a computer and tablet is one and a half times higher than the income for mobile phones.
- In total, 4.3 million students do not have access to the internet, either because of a lack of money to hire the service or buy a device, or because of the unavailability of the service in the regions where they live.
The laptop computer was the most frequently used device (45%) for monitoring classes or remote activities among students in AB classes. The scenario changes for disadvantaged groups, in which the cell phone was the device most used by young people from classes C (43%) and DE (54%) to carry out educational activities.
The data are confirmed by a survey conducted by Instituto Península, which assessed the perception of seven thousand teachers from public and private Basic Education networks about their performance between March and November 2020. The survey shows that 79% of teachers see the lack of infrastructure and adequate connectivity for students at home as the main problem to interact with the class. In 2020, more than 80% of teachers kept contact with students restricted to cell phones, through applications such as Whatsapp, which limits the possibilities for remote teaching.
The situation is not better in the public sector, which brings together students in a more vulnerable socioeconomic situation – 83% of these students’ families have an average monthly income of, at most, one minimum wage. Almost 80% of them could access content online, but two-thirds do not have a computer, and half relies on cell phones, which hinders learning. At the end of 2020, almost half of the municipal networks reported having great difficulty for students to access the internet. The data are from the National Union of Municipal Education Directors (Undime), which carried out two surveys to detail the challenges faced by municipal education networks, one in May 2020 and another in February 2021. The survey sample included nearly four thousand municipal networks, responsible for the education of about 14.5 million students.
María Del Carmen Chude, an expert in Educational Sciences, comments: “the cell phone has good functionality for the teacher to communicate with the student and the student’s family. But it is not suitable, for example, for students to read and produce texts”. Chude is the pedagogical director of Letra e Ponto Educational Projetcs and of the Science Today Program to Support Education, at Instituto Ciência Hoje.
Unpreparedness of teachers and education networks
Educational networks have another challenge: access to digital technology and adapting classes to the virtual world. According to the Undime survey, in May of 2020, a quarter of the municipalities lacked support for accessing tools and platforms at the beginning of the isolation period, and one in four networks had difficulty in promoting teachers’ access to the internet.
Schools that have technological resources, in turn, suffer from the lack of familiarity of teachers with digital tools and little experience in the pedagogy required for good online learning. Instituto Península found that 88% of teachers from public and private networks had never taught virtual classes before the pandemic, and 83% felt unprepared for this. In mid-2020, 75% of teachers complained about the lack of training for distance teaching and 64% felt the need for pedagogical support to help children with their studies at home.
Despite all the obstacles, the year 2020 ended with most teachers dedicated to distance learning – an indication of the efforts of networks and schools to adapt to the new teaching modality. Instituto Península found that, after ten months of closing the schools, 72% of the teachers in the public and private basic education systems continued to teach classes only in remote format. The Undime survey of February 2021 shows that 70% of schools in municipal networks completed the school year until December of the previous year, more than 90% of them with remote classes. However, most focused on teacher-student interaction on Whatsapp guidance and the use of printed material. Only 21% adopted live online video classes, which allow greater interaction between teacher and students.
Inequalities
Given the precarious technological infrastructure and the lack of pedagogical guidelines, the format of virtual classes has compromised the performance of the students. The Península Institute survey found that, at the end of 2020, 72% of public and private teachers considered that learning performance in 2020 through remote education was below or much lower than expected.
The academic performance of students also depends on the socioeconomic conditions of the families. A survey carried out by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) and by the United Nations Children’s Fund, of the United Nations (Unicef-UN), evaluated the vulnerability of Brazilian children in two rounds, in July and November 2020 in the isolation scenario imposed by the pandemic. And it found that, at the end of 2020, 69% of students with a family income of up to one minimum wage had received activities over the internet, while in the population with an income of two to five minimum wages, the rate was 89%. For those with a family income above five minimum wages, the proportion rose to 92%.
According to Instituto Península, 91% of teachers believed, at the end of 2020, that the poorest students will be left behind, due to the difficulty of keeping up with classes from home, mainly due to the lack of connectivity and devices. This gap is also related to the routine of families. “It is common for families from lower socioeconomic classes to have a single cell phone or computer”, says Chude. “If the father takes his cell phone to work, how will the child be able to keep up with classes? The same goes for families that have a single computer. In families with more than one child, there is no way to provide the equipment for everyone to watch live classes, which take place at the same time.”
One of the concerns is about the increase in age-grade distortion, a factor that contributes to school dropout. According to the 2019 School Census, the distortion rate in public networks is higher than in the private network. For the first grade of high school, for example, 33% of public school students are older than expected for the grade; in the private network, this rate is 8%.
Challenges for the future
Studies indicate that remote classes will enter the school routine after the period of social isolation. In the Península Institute survey, 44% of teachers said they see the future of education as a hybrid model of teaching, with classroom and online classes. In addition, 94% of them consider technology to be very important or fundamental to learning today. Before the pandemic, only 57% had this perception.
This means that Brazilian Basic Education has several challenges to overcome in order to guarantee quality in the post-pandemic learning. Chude points out some of these challenges: the definition of public policies to equip schools and students, the preparation of teachers to deal with technology and virtual pedagogy, and the redesign of learning models in remote, face to face and hybrid modes. Another challenge is the recovery of learning with curriculum planning and the definition of new ways to monitor the evolution of each student.
“It is also essential to define clear goals that guarantee equity, promoting access for all students from all families to remote activities. The effort to implement these changes is fundamental to insert the country among those who already have an education focused on the reality of the 21st century”, concludes the psycho-pedagogue.
And you, teacher or educational manager: what is your perception about all this?
Themes: Remote teaching; Teachers; High school; Public education; Distance learning; Schools; Covid-19
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