Remote and Remote/In-Person Teaching from the Perspective of High-School Students during The COVID-19 Pandemics

Abstract

Due to the COVID-19 pandemics, contention measures were implemented by countries to slow the dissemination of the virus, leading to school and university closures. As an immediate solution in-person classes were moved to the online environment, then being referred to as "Remote Teaching", which has been a challenge both students and teachers are facing. In this context, this research examines the perception of high school students from private high schools in São Paulo regarding the quality of their education and the impacts on learning during the times of remote teaching and remote/in-person teaching. The data were collected using semi-structured interviews with five students from different high schools. The interviews took place in early 2021, when schools were returning to in-person classes, but had to adopt different strategies to stay in conformity with sanitary protocols. The analysis was focused on the high schools' organizational and infrastructural aspects, the teaching strategies that were adopted, their impact on learning, teacher-student relations, and students' social life. Our results show that between the years of 2020 and 2021, there were organizational rearrangements that caused considerable limitations to the learning process, not only from a technical perspective, but also pedagogically. We can infer that technology allowed for the continuation of the education process, but its potentialities were underused. We conclude that although the schools have taken an important step towards the usage of digital resources in teaching, the reformulation of their pedagogical projects is still essential to really integrate remote and in-person activities.

Keywords: Basic education. Remote teaching. Pandemics.