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Few teachers, students and parents will forget the last quarter of the 2019-2020 academic year. The Covid turned education upside down at all educational levels, but perhaps it was in the early stages of compulsory education that the system was totally overwhelmed. It is in these early ages of life when the school acquires all its value, because in addition to being the place of learning par excellence, where the professionals of the future are built, it is a meeting place, where we rehearse the first rules of coexistence, where we socialize, where we interact with our peers, where the first experiences and emotions are lived, where we all have the same opportunities … something basic in the development of the human being. But all that was ruined between March 11 and 12, 2020 when the country’s schools closed their doors to stop the pandemic. Even with everyone at home, teachers, students and parents, teaching didn’t stop in the hardest weeks of confinement, a long parenthesis that uncovered the deficiencies of an educational system on which a large part of its community has been demanding a profound transformation for years, from head to toe. For many now the time has come to face the challenge: build the foundations of a new school adapted to the 21st century. A challenge from which the recent Celaá law, like many other educational laws passed throughout democracy, has lagged behind.
With the already lived experience of remote teaching during this pandemic, the first thing that many wonder is whether the new school will replace face-to-face education in Primary and Secondary with purely online teaching. And the answer is unanimous: face-to-face teaching is a priority. The professors claim this as the investigation revealed “Panorama of education in Spain after the Covid-19 pandemic”, shortly before the end of the course in June of last year. This study was carried out by the Fundación de Ayuda contra la Drogadicción (FAD) and BBVA, within the framework Connected Education, where more than 5,000 teachers and groups of students and families participated, concludes that the presence in the classrooms is conceived as a necessity because it «guarantees equality, promotes learning more effectively, enables better explanations and personalized attention and allows the deployment of all the educational potential of the centers ». «Open classrooms ensure equity and quality in education, they favor contact between equals and with the teacher ”, he defends Sonia Garcia, State Secretary of Communication of the ANPE teachers union.
The educational community has no doubts. “Nobody thinks that classes are virtual one hundred percent or forever,” he says Maria Zabala, Communication consultancy specialized in Ethics and Digital Citizenship. For many reasons: «School is the place for learning content and other skills that involve being and living with others, in equal opportunities “, indicates Ainara Zubillaga, Director of Education and Training of the Cotec Foundation. “Education has to do with meeting, with contact, with experiencing certain emotions, with looking at each other’s face … and this does not occur in the context of screens,” he says. Javier Garcia, Program Director Responsible Education of the Botín Foundation, which also highlights another great role of schools: “In vulnerable environments, they are the first place of detention and prevention of problems.”
From the pandemic, the school has emerged strengthened as an institution. Now, no one is aware that the future will have to be digital and incorporate new technologies as the rest of society has done. “The implementation of virtual classrooms and the digitization of the educational community are more than just possibilities,” says Sonia García. And that brings with it a profound transformation that entails a new role for the teacher, which requires the adoption of new teaching methodologies, which will give a 360 degree turn to the curricular content and which will mean a great leap in the acquisition of new skills, already essential for The world in which we live.
And to achieve all these challenges, a good starting point is the experience already lived. During almost three months of confinement, the homes became (and still are) laboratories where the first practices of remote teaching and learning were rehearsed. It was when the digital divide that had already been warned was exposed. Inequality in access to the Internet and ICT both for schools and teachers and for families and students has been a great weakness. Precisely, the FAD study reveals that the lack of devices (laptops, tablets …) for students and the need to have adequate platforms and materials for online learning is one of the great concerns of teachers. «The technological revolution offers a series of potentialities, but it requires investment and effort and we had not done it. You have to put investment, reflection and love into the educational system, “he says. Fernando Trujillo, the coordinator of this study, professor at the University of Granada and researcher of a working group of the JRC (Joint Research Center, of the European Commission).
It’s not just about having connectivity and electronic devices. This does not overcome the digital divide. The lack of training in the management and knowledge of ICT, how to use them appropriately, at what times, for what content … has overwhelmed families, students and teachers. “The scant attention paid to the development of digital competence has become apparent”, considers Sonia García.
“Parents were overwhelmed because they did not know how to manage the platforms,” Zabala recalls. And although we believe that current generations of students are digital natives, the pandemic has revealed that we are wrong. «They can play video games, but they don’t know how to download a PDF file, or convert it to Zip … They value any blog as a serious means of communication. They copy and do not cite the sources. They do not know how to behave in an online class, they put the microphone when it is not their turn, they deactivate the camera so that they are not seen … », says Zabala. Nor have the teachers been very clear: «It is not about doing a blog and interactive activities, but being a teacher through a screen, with what that means to hook the student and maintain an attractive class. It is not about reproducing online what is done in face-to-face class, because the students lose focus. Many centers reproduced the five-hour shift in front of the screen, sent homework and held a virtual meeting to answer questions with the teacher. There was no strategy in mind, ”Zabala considers.
And all that has to change. The pandemic has confirmed that ICT and digitization are great allies for teaching and learning, one more tool like a book, a pencil or a marker or a calculator. “Teachers have seen that they bring positive things and that it is not so difficult to use them. Students can use them at school working with the teacher, in the library, or at home, doing homework or group work, ”says Zubillaga. It has no reverse gear. “We are entering a hybrid stage in teaching. The incorporation of ICT in students has to be done gradually and depending on age. It is clear that in Infant the manipulative, the affective and the social must be worked on. In Primary introduce them in some subjects. And in Secondary there should be a hybrid education, “says Trujillo.
The challenges
Many experts believe that integrating ICT into both classroom and online teaching requires a national strategy. And that would entail other reforms, as Zubillaga argues. “The curriculum is overflowing with content,” he says. «It must be updated to the needs we have in the world today. Incorporate the four Cs, collected by the EU: communication, collaboration, capacity for critical thinking and creativity to learn differently », Explain Orrantia Remedies, president of HAZ (Alliance for Education) and the Vodafone Spain Foundation. “The new school would have to incorporate the acquisition of soft skills. We cannot train students who are very well prepared but who are socially fragile and who cannot face the uncertainties that arise. Music, plastic arts, project work, new pedagogies … are means to acquire these skills. Education has to be focused on questions and not so much on answers, on experience and not so much on theory, on the arts to develop sensitivities, where times are not fixed and rigid and thus be able to attend to different maturations ”, believes Javier García. In addition, it would be necessary “to rethink the training of teachers and their professional career, the selection processes, as well as review the capacity of the centers to lead projects: directors cannot choose their own teams to start new initiatives”, he adds Zubillaga.
They all believe that the time has come. “Now we have the opportunity to make a real change. For the first time there is a social consensus: there is a social need to do it, the private sector has taken a step forward and we have the recovery funds, “says Remedios Orrantia. In fact, the National Plan for Digital Competences includes the digitization of the school, through the deployment of infrastructures, teacher training, educational techniques, reinforcement of STEM vocations (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and integration of computational thinking from the initial stages of education. Will it be enough to make the big leap to the 21st century school?
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