Post-pandemic Pedagogy: Distance Education in Greece During COVID-19 Pandemic Through the Eyes of the Teachers

Abstract

Distance education had already appeared since 1970. During the first implementation period it mainly concerned adults and education at university level. In the recent years, through the internet development, distance education has acquired a new hypostasis, as innovative applications have facilitated its implementation in multiple contexts. Despite this, education remained mainly on a physical level (face to face interaction), while distance education was rather complementary (hybrid or blended learning). However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the first pandemic in the digital era, an urgent need that led to a universal and “violent” transition to distance education arose, often without assuring the necessary preconditions. This research aims to capture the experience of teachers in Greece during this transition.

Greek teachers' resilience levels during the COVID‐19 pandemic lockdown and its association with attitudes towards emergency remote teaching and perceived stress

“…At a later stage, they adopted synchronous forms of distance teaching with technical problems such as limited resources, limited support for children at home and limited experience of using information communication technology emerging as important obstacles to overcome (Nikolopoulou, 2022 ). Similar results were reported by studies on the practices of primary and secondary school teachers; despite struggling initially with implementing distance education, they subsequently rose to the challenge of catering effectively for their students (Jimoyiannis et al, 2021 ; Nikiforos et al, 2020 ). Moreover, these studies highlighted the teachers' perceived needs for professional development and support.…”

Outlining the Educational Achievement of a Greek Online School during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…This is in line with some studies which connect E-learning and Blended Learning to academic achievement [35], [27], [36]. Although, the success of the Online School is examined through a qualitative approach based on students and teachers' opinions, it is essential to underline that several studies refer to teachers' positive disposition towards distance learning during the pandemic [37], [38].…”

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“…The school administration appeared to have been closer to the teachers, together with the remote learning support team (Jurs and Kulberga, 2021;Meinck et al, 2022;Nikiforos et al, 2020;Papazoglou and Koutouzis, 2020 ;Truzoli et al, 2020). The school administration managed to support them through good organization, through providing every piece of important information, but also through resolving potential problems they faced, while the support teamwhich consisted of teachers of the school, either ICT teachers or simple teachers that possessed certain specialized knowledgeresponded to a satisfactory degree to its task by eagerly supporting the school staff.…”

“…The school administration managed to support them through good organization, through providing every piece of important information, but also through resolving potential problems they faced, while the support teamwhich consisted of teachers of the school, either ICT teachers or simple teachers that possessed certain specialized knowledgeresponded to a satisfactory degree to its task by eagerly supporting the school staff. Moreover, it is worth mentioning that there was support among the teachers (Giasiranis and Sofos, 2021;Jurs and Kulberga, 2021;Temelli et al, 2021) through formal as well as informal communication channels, which gave them the potential to exchange information, knowledge and experiences, all precious for the effectuation of their work (Nikiforos et al, 2020;Papazoglou and Koutouzis, 2020 ).…”