Emergency Remote Education in a context of crisis brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic: experiences of basic education teachers in Alagoas

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic that broke out in March 2020 to society constituted an atypical and abrupt scenario to education. Due to the isolation and social distancing, schools needed to adapt their educational processes to a context apart from methodological reality, thus, investing in massive solutions of Digital Information and Communication Technologies (DICT), anchored in the Emergency Remote Education (ERE). In this context, a survey on the teaching experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic, in front of the challenges of digital culture, revealed 'nuances' in the social and teacher training that limit the ideals of education for the 21st century. In these circumstances, this qualitative study, supported by a descriptive theory, investigated how basic education teachers of public and private schools in Alagoas, in the stages of elementary and secondary education, experienced ERE in a scenario of crisis caused by Covid-19 in 2020, demarcating the challenges and limitations. The survey was conducted with 237 teachers through semi-structured questionnaires applied between April and July 2020, which analyzed categories such as 'digital equity', 'scarce resources' and 'DICT training'. Consequently, the study could infer that the challenges and limitations were accentuated by the methodological anachronism and the social status of students and teachers. Moreover, the impacts of the pandemic on education may have repercussions on possible changes in the educational spaces and processes.